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UNMASKED. 


OF  mWATU 


IN  SIX  LETTERS 


ADDRESSED  TO  THE 

REV.  NICHOLAS  MURRAY,  l).  D, 

Of  EfcraABETHTOW.V,  Jft  4, 

HV  :r':/r;:  "  :--  ■  " 

RIGHT  REV,  JOHN  HUGHES,  D.  & 

BISHOP  OF  NEW  TORK- 


THIRD  EDITION* 

NEW  YORK:; 

EDWARD  DUN f GAN  &  BROTHER. 

151  1?  ETL  TON-STREET* 


MDCCCXtvm. 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 
in  2019  with  funding  from 

University  of  Illinois  Urbana-Champaign  Alternates 


https://archive.org/details/kirwanunmaskedreOOhugh 


KIRWAN  UNMASKED. 


A  REVIEW  OE  KIRWAN, 

IN  SIX  LETTERS 

ADDRESSED  TO  THE 

REV.  NICHOLAS  MURRAY,  D.  D. 

OF  ELIZABETHTOWN,  N.  J. 

BY 

THE  RIGHT  REV.  JOHN  HUGHES,  D.  D. 

BISHOP  OF  NEW  YORK. 

THIRD  EDITION. 

,  NEW  YORK: 

EDWARD  DUN  1G AN  &  BROTHER, 

101  FULT  0  N  -  STRE  ET. 


MDCCCXLVIII. 


Hi 


KIEWAN  UNMASKED. 

- - - 

TO  KIRWAN, 

alias  the  Rev.  Nicholas  Murray,  D.  D., 

Of  Elizabethtown,  New  Jersey. 

Dear  Sir  : — 

So  long  as  you  wore  a  mask,  which  no  hon¬ 
est  man  need  ever  wear  in  a  free  country  like 
this,  I  was  excused,  on  your  own  admission, 
from  any  obligation  to  notice  you.  Now  that 
you  have  cast  it  aside,  I  feel  no  longer  bound 
j  o  adhere  to  my  first  resolution. 

Your  Letters  purport  to  explain  the  reasons 
;  '  why  you  left  the  Roman  Catholic  Church  and 
became  a  Presbyterian.  The  object  of  mine 
will  be  to  review  those  reasons.  If  I  shall  suc- 
ceed  in  refuting  them,  and  assigning  others 
.  more  in  accordance  with  the  facts  of  the  case, 
j  I  will  not  trouble  myself  with  answering  those 
in  your  second  series  under  the  head  of  reasons 
why  you  do  not  return.  If  the  deserters  from 
the  American  flag  in  the  Mexican  campaign, 
(among  whom,  I  am  sorry  to  say,  were  some 

m 


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4 


KIRWAN  UNMASKED. 


Irishmen,)  can  justify  themselves  for  having 
fled  from  the  ranks  of  their  country,  the  world 
will  readily  dispense  with  their  reasons  for  not 
returning. — The  enemy,  no  doubt,  received 
them  with  that  mingled  feeling  of  joy  at  the 
treason,  and  contempt  for  the  traitor,  which,  on 
the  whole,  is  rather  honorable  than  otherwise 
in  the  character  of  human  nature — whilst  the 
gallant  army  they  had  forsaken  had  the  con¬ 
solation  to  know  that  after  their  departure,  it 
contained  in  each  case,  at  least  one  coward 
less  than  before.  But  friends  and  foes  would 
take  it  as  a  matter  of  course  that  such  persons 
would  have  good  reasons  for  not  returning. 

The  Catholic  Church,  however,  has  a  moth¬ 
er’s  heart,  and  not  a  warrior’s.  If  at  any  time, 
moved  by  the  grace  of  God,  you  should  knock 
at  her  gates,  as  a  penitent,  she  would  receive 
you  as  such,  and  rejoice  at  your  restoration. 
Considering  the  importance  which  you  attach 
u  vour  going  out  from  her  communion,  thirty 
years  ago,  never,  never,  to  return,  you  must 
admit  that  she  has  borne  your  absence  with 
great  resignation ;  in  fact,  amidst  the  numerous 
defections  from  the  faith  which  loneliness  and 
poverty  entail  on  juvenile  immigrants  and  or¬ 
phan  boys  of  Irish  and  Catholic  parentage  in 
this  country,  an  individual  case  like  yours  might 
easily  have  escaped  her  notice.  But  you  have 


% 

KIRWAN  UNMASKED.  5 


taken  from  her  the  bliss  of  ignorance,  in  the 
premises.  “  Kirwan”  tells  her  that  you,  Nicholas 
Murray,  now  a  Presbyterian  clergyman,  gave 
her  the  cold  shoulder,  when  you  were  quite  a  boy, 
thirty  years  ago.  Nay,  more;  he  says  that 
one  of  the  means  employed  by  her  for  arresting 
the  progress  of  sin,  was  by  you  turned  into  an 
opportunity  of  additional  sinning  ; — “  you  al¬ 
ways  found,”  he  says,  “  that  you  could  play 
your  pranks  better  after  confession  than  be¬ 
fore.”  .  .  .  This  inward  reading  of  yourself,  at 
so  early  an  age,  should  have  convinced  you 
that  already,  and  unknown  to  yourself,  you 
were  a  genuine  Protestant  book,  done  up,  some 
how,  by  mistake,  in  Catholic  binding. 

I  honor  the  man  who,  under  his  responsibility 
to  God,  has  the  moral  courage  to  change  his 
religion,  when,  after  mature  investigation,  he 
conscientiously  believes  that  he  is  passing  from 
error  to  truth.  It  is  a  great  and  solemn  act. 
When  it  is  attended,  as  it  sometimes  is,  by  the 
greatest  sacrifice  of  worldly  interest,  and  is 
manifestly  done  for  the  soul’s,  and  God’s,  and 
Truth’s  sake,  it  becomes,  in  my  estimation,  the 
most  heroic  and  sublime  act  that  man  is  ca¬ 
pable  of  performing  on  the  earth.  I  do  not 
say  that  it  is  always  insincere  even  when  the 
convert  promotes  his  temporal  interests  by  the 
change.  But,  in  the  latter  case,  it  loses  much 

1* 


KIR  WAN  UNMASKED. 


.  6 


of  the  influence  which,  as  an  example,  it 
would  otherwise  exercise  on  the  public  mind. 
Neither  do  I  regard  it  as  improper  that  he  who 
has  experienced  such  a  change,  should  assign 
the  reasons  that  brought  it  about.  But  in 
assigning  them,  all  serious  men  would  expect 
that  they  should  be  good  and  true  reasons. 
Now,  I  propose,  in  reply  to  your  Letters,  to 
prove  that  the  reasons  assigned  by  you  are  not 
good  reasons  in  themselves,  and  that  even  if 
they  were,  in  the  nature  of  things,  they  found 
no  place  in  the  circumstances  of  your  supposed 
conversion  from  “Popery”  to  Presbyterianism. 

Your  Letters,  so  far  as  regards  the  grammat¬ 
ical  construction  of  phrases,  and  a  correct  and 
almost  elegant  use  of  Anglo-Saxon  words,  are 
not  unworthy  of  the  country  which  produced  a 
Dean  Swift,  or  a  Goldsmith.  They  are  also 
pervaded  by  a  silvery  thread  of  wit,  which  is 
unmistakeably  Irish,  but  which  too  often,  in 
your  Letters,  runs  into  profanity.  As  a  Logi¬ 
cian,  you  are  entitled  to  little  praise.  As  a 
Theologian,  even  on  the  Protestant  system,  to 
less  still;  whilst  as  an  upright,  candid  adver¬ 
sary,  honestly  laboring  to  overthrow  doctrines 
believed  to  be  erroneous,  you  can  lay  claim  to 
none  whatever. 

Two  things,  at  the  outset,  tell  very  badly 
against  you.  You  represent  me  as  teaching  a 


KIRWAN  UNMASKED. 


7 


doctrine  which  I  do  not  believe,  and  yet,  in 
various  unexpected  forms,  you  profess  to  ren¬ 
der  me  the  homage  of  your  respect.  Now,  dear 
sir,  let  me  say,  that  if  you  believe  me  to  be  a 
deceiver  of  my  fellow-Catholics,  you  cannot 
have  entertained  any  respect  for  my  character, 
unless  your  moral  perceptions  are  too  dim  to 
discover  any  difference  between  vice  and  vir¬ 
tue.  If  you  profess  a  respect,  which  you  do 
not  feel,  it  is  equally  manifest  that  your  stand¬ 
ard  of  morals  is  artificial,  subject  to  the  control 
of  your  will  and  your  pen.  In  either  case  you 
are  inconsistent,  and  it  is,  perhaps,  well  for  you 
that  you  did  not  write  your  Letters  under  the 
solemnity  of  an  oath,  in  which  case  something 
like  perjury  would  come  out  on  the  cross-ex¬ 
amination. 

By  what  right,  sir,  did  you  assume  that  I  am 
not  sincere  in  the  profession  of  the  Catholic 

1  Faith  ?  And  if  you  did  assume  it,  by  what 
rule  of  hypocrisy  and  falsehood  did  you  stultify 
yourself  by  professing  respect  for  my  charac¬ 
ter  ?  You  could  find  the  premises  of  such  a 
false  and  uncharitable  conclusion  only  in  your 
heart,  or  mine.  To  mine  you  have  had  no  ac¬ 
cess,  and  you  should  have  been  cautious  in  pro¬ 
claiming  such  discoveries  as  could  have  been 
derived,  only  by  analogy,  from  your  own. 

I  believe  the  truth  of  the  doctrines  taught  by 


8 


KIRWAN  UNMASKED. 


the  Holy  Catholic  Church  as  firmly  as  I  do  my 
own  existence.  Nay,  more.  I  believe  that, 
as  containing  the  fulness  of  Divine  revelation, 
it  is  the  only  true  Church  on  the  earth — al¬ 
though  many  true  Catholic  doctrines  are  found 
floating  about  as  opinions  in  the  religious  at¬ 
mosphere  of  Protestantism.  This  is  my  pro¬ 
fession  of  faith,,  of  the  sincerity  of  which  the 
Almighty  is  my  witness ;  and  I  am  not  aware 
that  I  have  ever  given  you,  or  any  other  human 
being,  reason  to  infer,  by  word  or  action,  that 
I  believed  otherwise. 

I  must  decline,  therefore,  the  tender  of  your 
respect  for  my  character.  But  I  would  not 
have  you  on  that  account  to  regard  me  as  an 
enemy.  On  the  contrary,  I  would  be  your 
friend  ;  and  the  highest  proof  of  this  which  you 
have  left  it  in  my  power  to  offer,  is  the  sincere 
declaration  that,  as  a  fellow-being,  you  have 
my  pity — and  best  washes  withal.  I  shall  be¬ 
gin  to  analyze  your  reasons  next  week. 

■f*  John  Hughes,  Bishop  of  New  York. 


KIRWAN  UNMASKED. 


9 


LETTER  II. 


TO  KIRWAN, 

alias  the  Rev.  Nicholas  Murray,  D.  D., 

Of  Elizabethtown,  New  Jersey. 

Dear  Sir  : — 

The  merit  of  your  letters,  if  they  have  any 
in  the  eyes  of  sincere  Protestants,  is  in  the 
supposed  fact  that  you  were  brought  up  and 
instructed  in  the  Catholic  religion ;  and  that 
your  testimony  is  more  trustworthy,  on  this 
account,  than  if  you  had  been  born  and  brought 
up  a  Protestant. 

This  is,  in  fact,  the  ground  which  you  have 
taken.  You  speak  of  your  self ,  of  your  know¬ 
ledge  and  experience  of  the  Catholic  religion, 
of  your  reasons  for  renouncing  it,  from  the 
beginning  to  the  end  of  your  letters.  You 
are  the  witness  in  the  cause ;  you  are  the 
hero  of  the  romance ;  and  it  will  be  impossible 
for  me  to  do  justice  to  the  review,  without 
paying  attention  to  the  prominent  personality 
which  you  have  established  for  yourself,  in  as¬ 
signing  the  reasons  of  your  conversion. 


10 


KIRWAN  UNMASKED. 


The  first  position  which  I  intend  to  estab¬ 
lish  then,  is,  that  Ireland  never  produced  a 
peasant  more  ignorant  of  the  Catholic,  or  of 
the  Protestant  religion,  than  you  were  when 
you  renounced  the  creed  of  your  fathers  and 
became  an  infidel.  For  the  proof  of  this  posi¬ 
tion  you  shall  be  my  witness.  Turn  to  your 
first  letter  and  read  your  own  words : 

“  I  first  became  an  infidel.  Knowing  nothing 
of  religion  but  that  which  was  taught  me  by 
parents  and  priests,  and  thinking  that  that  was 
the  sum  of  it,  when  that  was  rejected  infidelity 
became  my  only  alternative/’ — p.  11. 

“  On  reaching  the  years  of  maturity  my 
mind  was  a  perfect  blank  as  to  all  religious  in¬ 
struction.” — p.  30. 

“  With  my  Missal  I  was  somewhat  familiar; 
I  said  the  catechism  when  I  was  confirmed,  at 
the  age  of  nine  or  ten,  and  that  was  the  amount 
of  my  religious  education.  At  the  age  of 
eighteen  years  the  catechism  was  forgotten, 
and  the  Missal  was  neglected,  and  as  my  con¬ 
science  was  uneducated,  and  my  mind  unfur¬ 
nished  with  religious  principles,  the  only  test 
of  truth  left  me  was  my  common  sense.” — 
p.  31. 

This  was  precisely  the  age  at  which  you  left 
the  Church  and  became  an  infidel.  Your 
“  mind  was  a  perfect  blank  as  to  all  religious 


KIRWAN  UNMASKED. 


11 


instruction.”  In  other  words,  you  were  per¬ 
fectly  ignorant  of  the  religion  which  you  were 
about  to  reject,  and,  if  we  can  trust  to  your 
own  language,  this  ignorance  was  the  only 
reason  going  before  and  determining  your  con¬ 
version  to  infidelity. 

The  reader  may  suppose  that  in  proclaiming 
your  profound  ignorance  of  religion,  your 
meaning  is,  that  you  understood  the  Catholic 
faith,  in  which  you  were  brought  up,  but  that 
you  were  as  yet  ignorant  of  the  pure  evangeli¬ 
cal  doctrines  which  you  have  since  embraced. 
But  this  would  be  a  mistake.  Your  meaning  is, 
that  you  were  entirely  ignorant  of  the  Catholic 
religion,  as  well  as  of  all  others.  For  this  also 
we  have  your  own  testimony,  in  the  following 
words : 

“  Some  book  or  tract,  now  forgotten,  gave 
rise  to  some  inquiries  as  to  the  Mass.  I  asked, 
What  does  it  mean  ?  I  could  not  tell,  though 
for  years  a  regular  attendant  upon  it.  Why 
does  the  priest  dress  so  ?  What  book  does  he 
read  from,  when  carried  now  to  his  right,  and 
now  to  his  left  ?  What  means  those  candles 
burning  at  noonday  ?  Why  do  I  say  prayers 
in  Latin,  which  I  understand  not  ?  Should  I 
not  know  what  I  am  saying  when  addressing 
my  Maker  ?  Why  bow  down  and  strike  my 
breast  when  the  little  bell  rings  ?  What  does 


12 


KIR  WAN  UNMARKED. 


it  all  mean?  The  darkness  of  Egypt  rested 
upon  these  questions — p.  33. 

Never  did  man  forsake  one  religion  and  join 
another,  who  had  contrived  to  be  so  profound¬ 
ly  ignorant  of  the  forsaken  creed  as  you,  Nich¬ 
olas  Murray,  prove  yourself  to  have  been,  in 
regard  to  Catholicity,  when  you  renounced  it 
and  became  an  infidel.  Whatever  you  know 
of  it  now,  true  or  false,  you  have  learned  as 
other  Protestants  do,  outside  of  the  Church 
and  from  her  enemies. 

It  is  imputed  to  our  countrymen  that  they 
act  first,  and  refect  afterwards.  I  am  sorry, 
sir,  that  your  conduct,  when  you  renounced 
the  creed  of  your  humble,  but,  I  have  no  doubt, 
virtuous  and  respectable  parents,  goes  so  far  to 
justify  the  imputation.  It  is  certain,  on  your 
own  testimony,  that  when  you  ceased  to  be  a 
Catholic  and  became  an  infidel,  the  Catholic 
religion  might  be  true,  or  might  be  false,  for  all 
you  knew  about  it.  It  is  equally  certain  that 
when ,  in  1847,  you  published  a  series  of  smart, 
if  not  learned,  reasons  for  your  conduct  thirty 
years  ago,  you  have  been  again  acting  more 
Hibernico — and  sorry  am  I  that  during  so 
long  a  period,  with  the  advantages  of  American 
and  Presbyterian  training,  you  have  not  yet 
outgrown  the  national  weakness.  But,  sir, 
no  genuine  Irishman  would  attempt  to  jus- 


Kill  WAN  UNMASKED. 


13 


tify  his  act  by  reasons  which,  in  the  order  of 
time,  occur  to  his  mind  thirty  years  after  the 
act  had  been  performed — as  you  have  done. 
A  genuine  Irishman  would  consent  to  be 

O 

laughed  at,  and  would  join  in  the  laugh  with 
right  good  humor,  rather  than  attempt  the 
trick  of  reversing  the  wheel  of  time,  and  as¬ 
signing  the  reasons  of  1847  as  the  motives  of 
his  conduct  in  1820. 

The  chronology  of  the  events  which  make 
up  a  case  is  oftentimes  very  important.  Pre¬ 
vious  to  your  conversion  you  knew  nothing 
of  the  Catholic — nothing  of  the  Protestant — 
religion.  The  reasons  assigned  in  your  recent 
Letters,  may  or  may  not  be  good  reasons,  but 
whether  good  or  bad,  they  had  nothing  to  do 
with  your  change  of  religion.  You  blundered 
out  of  the  Church  and  into  infidelity,  without 
knowing  why  or  wherefore — and  your  reasons 
are  all  out  of  date.  They  might  be  styled 
with  great  propriety,  “  An  Irishman’s  Motives 
for  becoming  a  Protestant,  arranged  according 
to  the  order  imputed  to  his  Countrymen,  that 
of  acting  first,  and  reflecting  afterwards.” 

You  may  blame  your  priests  or  your  pa¬ 
rents,  as  you  please,  for  the  peculiar  absence 
of  religious  knowledge  which  preceded  your 
conversion.  But  the  fact  of  your  profound 
ignorance  of  all  religion,  at  the  period  of  your 

2 


14 


KIRWAN  UNMASKED. 


change,  is  the  material  point ,  and  you  have 
been  candid  enough  to  establish  that  point  be¬ 
yond  all  dispute. 

You  seem  to  be  troubled  with  a  peculiar 
weakness  of  memory — and  this  is  a  great  mis¬ 
fortune  in  a  Christian  man  who  writes  for  the 
edification  of  the  public.  After  what  we  have 
just  seen  of  your  mental  condition  at  the  pe¬ 
riod  of  your  apostacy  from  the  Church,  into 
what  an  awkward  exhibition  of  yourself  does 
this  short  memory  betray  you  at  the  end  of 
your  first  Letter,  where  you  profess  “to  state 
in  a  series  of  Letters  to  my  Right  Reverence 
the  reasons  which  induced  you  to  leave  the 
Roman  Catholic  Church,  and  which  prevent 
you  from  returning  to  it.” — (page  11.)  Now, 
dear  “  Kirwan,”  we  are  told  in  logic,  that,  of 
two  propositions  which  mutually  contradict 
each  other,  one  must  be  false.  If  your  mind 
was  “  a  perfect  blank  as  to  all  religious  instruc¬ 
tion,”  as  you  assure  us  it  was,  (page  30,)  how 
could  you  have  had  “reasons  that  induced 
you  to  leave  the  Church?” — (page  11.)  Have 
you  forgotten  in  the  one  page,  what  you  had 
affirmed  in  the  other  ?  Now,  however,  that  I 
have  called  your  recollection  to  the  mistake, 
pray  be  serious,  and  tell  the  public  which  of 
these  contradictory  statements  you  would 
have  it  to  believe.  Why,  sir,  your  own  great 


KIRWAN  UNMASKED. 


15 


stand-by,  “common  sense/'  revolts  at  the  in¬ 
sult  of  religious  “  reasons"  offered  from  a  mind 
which,  as  to  religious  instruction,  is  a  “  perfect 
olank ! !” 

Some  persons  may  think  that  you  are  quiz¬ 
zing  the  public.  I  think  not.  Your  memory 
appears  to  have  been  but  poor  from  your 
childhood.  And  here  allow  me  to  pluck  up  a 
nettle  which  you  would  have  planted  on  the 
graves  of  “  your  parents  and  priests."  Thanks 
to  their  charitable  efforts  for  your  instruction 
in  the  Christian  doctrine,  you  “knew  your 
Catechism  by  heart,  at  the  age  of  nine  or  ten 
years,  when  you  were  confirmed." — (page  31.) 
Now  I  would  call  this  a  good,  almost  an  ex¬ 
traordinary  memory  in  a  child  of  ten  years. 
It  had  taken  in  and  retained  the  waters  of 
Christian  knowledge  which  overspread  the 
pages  of  the  entire  Catechism  which  you  knew 
by  heart.  This  was  no  trifle.  But  the  first 
subsequent  evidence  of  its  failure  is  the  fact 
that  you  have  forgotten  to  tell  us  of  the  sad 
catastrophe  by  which  it  became  a  cracked  and 
leaky  cistern  immediately  after  confirmation ; 
so  that  the  “catechism  itself  was  forgotten" 
when  you  arrived  at  the  jumping-off  period 
of  eighteen  years. — (Ibid.)  Pray,  might  I  ask, 
whether  it  was  this,  your  precocious  talent  of 
forgetfulness  which  caused  you  to  be  “  even 


16 


IvIRWAN  UNMASKED. 


talked  of  as  a  candidate  for  Maynooth  ?” — 
(page  31.) 

But  after  all,  dear  sir,  this  memory  of  yours 
puzzles  me  amazingly.  I  turn  to  page  98, 
where  having  given  me  up,  you  address  the 
Irish  Catholic  Laity  in  such  tones  of  winning 
tenderness,  that  Blarney  Castle  never  tipped 
the  human  tongue  with  sweeter.  “  Your  pres¬ 
ent  feelings,  as  to  your  Church,  I  have  had, 
and  in  all  their  force.  I  can  entirely  appre¬ 
ciate  them.  I  have  cordially  hated  Protestant¬ 
ism  and  Protestants ;  and  I  have  seen  the 
time  when  I  regarded  the  man  as  my  personal 
enemy  who  would,  utter  a  word  against  my 
religion.  But  those  wTere  the  days  of  my 
youth  and  of  my  ignorance.  When  I  became 
a  man  I  put  away  childish  things.” — (page  98.) 
Why,  this  is  queer.  You  had  forgotten  at 
eighteen  what  the  Church  had  taught  you ; 

your  ha¬ 
tred,  of  Protestants,  which  she  never  taught 
you  at  all!  You  remember  that  when  you 
became  a  man,  you  “  put  away  childish  things” 
and  “became  also  an  infidel.”  Yet  you  forget 
that  you  had  told  us  before,  that  when  you 
became  a  man,  there  were  no  “  childish  things” 
left  to  be  put  away — that  they  had  already 
sloped  from  your  memory — that  at  the  early 
age  of  eighteen  you  had  “forgotten  them,” 


and  you  remember  at  nine-and-forty 


KIRWAN  UNMASKED. 


17 


and  that,  as  to  religious  instruction,  your  mind 
was  a  “perfect  blank  ! !” 

It  is  not  my  business  to  reconcile  these  flat, 
palpable  contradictions.  I  have  established, 
from  your  own  repeated  avowal,  your  utter 
and  profound  ignorance  of  the  Catholic  reli¬ 
gion,  when  you  left  the  Church,  and  became  an 
infidel.  You  never  came  back  to  finish,  or 
rather  to  begin  your  Catholic  education.  Like 
one  of  the  winged  messengers  let  loose  from 
the  hand  of  the  Patriarch,  you  found  more 
congenial  sustenance  abroad,  and  you  returned 
to  the  Ark  no  more.  In  all  this  you  may 
have  been  sincere,  and  if  you  were,  in  nothing 
of  this  do  I  blame  you.  But  I  do  blame  you 
for  assuming  a  character  which  does  not  belong 
to  you. 

When  a  man  changes  his  religion  he  ought 
to  be  serious  and  sincere.  When  he  does  it 
with  that  direct  reference  to  his  account  at 
the  bar  of  God’s  eternal  judgment,  which  leaves 
no  doubt  as  to  the  sincerity  of  his  motive,  then, 
as  I  have  said  once  before,  I  regard  it  as  the 
grandest  and  most  truly  heroic  act  of  which  a 
rational  being  is  capable  on  this  earth.  To 
assign  the  motives  for  such  an  act  is  equally 
fair  and  honorable.  But,  sir,  I  can  conceive  of 
nothing  more  disgusting  to  an  upright  mind, 
than  to  discover  what  is  vulgarly,  but  very  ex- 

2* 


18 


lL.>*  /VAN  UNMASKED. 


pressively  called  “  humbug”  mixed  up  in  the 
assignment  of  such  motives.  This  foul  admix¬ 
ture  is  what  I  charge  upon  your  recent  Letters, 
and  what  I  blame. 

The  American  public  are  generous,  and 
credulous  also,  towards  those  who  profess  to 
write  for  their  amusement  or  instruction.  Be¬ 
ing  chiefly  Protestants,  little  acquainted  with 
the  religion  which  you  have  forsaken  and  de¬ 
nounced,  they  would  be — they  have  been — 
particularly  generous  and  credulous  towards 
you.  As  an  Irishman,  it  was  unworthy  of  you 
to  take  unfair  advantage  of  these  noble  senti¬ 
ments. 

It  is  true,  that  if  they  read  your  pages  with 
a  cold,  impartial  criticism,  they  would  see 
enough  to  put  them  on  their  guard.  But  your 
profound  ignorance  of  the  Catholic  doctrine, 
when  you  became  an  infidel,  which  you  assert 
and  repeat,  usque  ad  nauseam ,  they  will  con¬ 
strue,  like  yourself,  as  the  reproach  of  your 
parents  and  priests.  On  the  other  hand,  your 
introduction  of  yourself  as  one  brought  up  in 
the  “  camp  of  the  enemy,”  was  obviously  in¬ 
tended  to  deceive  them.  Here  is  your  bow  to 
the  public.  “  I  was  baptized  by  a  priest — I 
was  confirmed  by  a  bishop — I  often  went  to 
confession — I  have  worn  my  amulets — and  I 
have  said  my  Pater  Nosters  and  my  Hail 


Kilt  WAN  UNMASKED. 


19 


Marys,  more  times  than  I  can  now  enume¬ 
rate.” — (page  10.) 

Now,  this  announcement  of  your  competen¬ 
cy  to  treat  the  subject,  is  sufficiently  brief,  and 
sufficiently  stupid. — Barring  the  “  amulets,” 
Voltaire  could  have  said  the  same  of  himself. 
But  ninety-nine  out  of  every  hundred  of  your 
American  readers  would  say  on  perusing  this 
— “  There,  there,  at  length,  is  a  man  who 
knows  Popery  from  within,  from  personal 
knowledge — a  man  who,  with  the  modesty  of 
true  genius,  merely  insinuates  the  extent  of 
his  information,  and  thus  avoids  egotism  and 
the  offensive  display  of  his  gifts.” 

Such  feelings  on  the  part  of  the  American 
public  ought  not  to  be  trifled  with  by  you.  Of 
your  own  knowledge  of  Popery,  as  you  call  it, 
you  know  nothing — and  you  have  avowed  it. 
Then  you  are  no  more  competent  to  speak  or 
write  of  it,  than  Dr.  Brownlee  was.  What 
you  know  of  it,  true  or  false,  you,  like  him, 
have  learned  from  its  enemies.  But  there  is  a 
difference.  Dr.  Brownlee  never  had  the  chance 
to  learn  and  then  forget  the  Catholic  catechism 
before  the  age  of  eighteen. 

Let  the  public,  then,  understand  that  you 
are  to  take  rank  among  those  anti-Catholic 
writers,  who  draw  from  such  fountains  as  that 
mammoth  reservoir — “McGavin’s  Protestant.” 


20 


KIRWAN  UNMASKED. 


Anti-Catholic  retailers  like  you  may  take  from 
that  source  theological  lore  to  any  extent,  and 
deal  it  out  to  those  who  have  a  relish  for  it. 
It  would  seem  that  such  persons  are  still  nu¬ 
merous  enough  to  make  the  nineteenth  centu¬ 
ry  ashamed  of  itself,  if  it  were  the  age  of  light 
which  it  professes  to  be. 

In  this  Letter  I  have  proved,  on  your  own 
testimony,  that  you  were  utterly  ignorant  of 
Catholic  doctrine  when  you  left  the  Church 
and  became  an  infidel.  In  my  next  I  shall 
have  the  more  pleasing  task  of  tracing  your 
progress  out  of  infidelity  and  into  Presbyteri¬ 
anism,  which  was  a  decided  improvement  in 
your  spiritual,  and  possibly  in  your  temporal 
condition.  Meanwhile,  I  feel  the  same  pity 
and  benevolence  towards  you  as  before.  * 

John  Hughes,  Bishop  of  New  York. 


KIRWAN  UNMASKED. 


21 


LETTER  III. 


TO  KIRWAN, 

alias  the  Rev.  Nicholas  Murray,  D.  D., 

Of  Elizabethtown,  New  Jersey. 

Dear  Sir  : — 

You  tell  us  that  “  ignorance  is  the  parent 
of  papal  devotion;”  (second  series,  page  86.) 
How  was  it,  then,  that  ignorance  produced  so 
contrary  an  effect  upon  you?  You  appear  to 
have  been  rather  a  good  boy,  when  you  said 
your  catechism,  at  nine  or  ten  years  of  age. 
But  at  eighteen,  your  mind  was  a  “  perfect 
blank  as  to  ail  religious  instruction.”  Could 
ignorance  be  greater  than  this  ?  How  is  it, 
then,  that  instead  of  the  Catholic  saint,  which 
your  rule  of  “papal  devotion”  should  have  led 
us  to  expect,  we  find  you  at  that  period  of  your 
life,  as  you  have  taken  pains  to  tell  us,  “  an  in¬ 
fidel?”  It  seems  that  from  ten  to  eighteen 
years,  as  your  “ignorance”  grew  more,  your 
“devotion”  grew  less — proving  that,  at  least 
in  your  case,  “  ignorance  is  not  the  parent  of 
papal  devotion,”'  but  rather  of  infidelity. 

I  insist,  as  you  perceive,  on  determining  the 


22 


KIRWAN  UNMASKED. 


state  of  your  intellect  at  the  period  of  your 
fall  from  the  faith.  Your  subsequent  acquire¬ 
ment  of  knowledge  and  education,  I  have  no 
wish  to  question  or  deny.  But  the  public  will 
be  naturally  interested  in  ascertaining  the  con¬ 
dition  of  your  mind,  at  the  critical  period,  for 
you,  when  you  rejected  the  Catholic  Church, 
and  embraced  infidelity.  A  life  so  important 
to  the  philosophical  and  theological  world  as 
yours,  requires  to  be  divided  into  distinct  and 
successive  epochs,  and  to  have  each  of  its  pe¬ 
riods  considered  separately  from  the  others,  if 
one  would  do  justice  to  the  whole. 

First,  then,  we  must  leave  out  the  Fresbyte- 
rian  education ,  which  you  have  acquired  since 
you  became  an  infidel,  at  the  age  of  eighteen. 
Secondly,  we  must  leave  out  the  education  of 
the  Catholic  catechism,  which  you  had  forgot¬ 
ten.  Thirdly,  we  must  leave  out  any  know¬ 
ledge  which  you  might  have  derived  from  Cath¬ 
olic  devotions,  for  you  tell  us  that  you  said  your 
prayers  “  in  Latin,  which  you  did  not  under¬ 
stand,” — (page  33.)  Fourthly,  we  must  leave 
out  all  instruction  by  hearing,  for  you  tell  us 
“  you  never  heard  a  sermon  preached  in  a 
Catholic  chapel  in  Ireland  ;  nor  a  word  of  ex¬ 
planation  on  a  single  Christian  topic,  or  doc¬ 
trine,  or  duty,” — (page  29.)  Now  according 
to  your  own  statement  this  was  the  condition 


KIRWAN  UNMASKED. 


23 


of  your  mind  when  you  left  the  Catholic  Church : 
— and  I  doubt  whether  Christendom  could  fur¬ 
nish  one  other  instance  of  such  mental  nudity 
— such  utter  destitution  of  all  Christian  know¬ 
ledge. 

And  now,  forsooth,  your  “Reasons'’  for 
leaving  the  Church !  What  reasons  ?  The 
existence  of  reasons  in  such  a  mind,  on  such 
a  subject,  was  a  metaphysical  impossibility. 
Reasons  necessarily  imply  comparison  ;  com¬ 
parison  necessarily  supposes  knowledge  of  the 
things  compared  ;  but  in  your  case,  as  we  take 
it  from  your  own  pen,  there  was  no  knowledge 
of  the  things  to  be  compared,  and  therefore 
there  could  be  no  comparison ;  and  therefore 
no  reasons, — that  is,  no  reasons  for  a  mind  in 
the  condition  of  yours,  as  you  have  described  it. 

But  you  had,  you  say,  “Common  sense.” 
I  doubt  it.  “  Common  sense”  is  by  no  means 
so  common  as  you  seem  to  imagine.  If  you 
take  the  term  to  signify  the  general  opinion  of 
the  age  and  country  you  lived  in  at  the  time, 
it  is  evident  that  your  renouncing  Catholicity, 
and  becoming  an  infidel,  was  not,  and  could 
not  be  called,  an  exercise  of  “common  sense.” 
If,  on  the  other  hand,  you  mean  that  intrin¬ 
sic  faculty  of  the  human  mind,  by  which  a 
man  decides  mentally  according  to  the  evi¬ 
dences  of  the  case,  it  is  eoually  clear  in  your 


24 


KIRWAN  UNMASKED. 


case,, that  common  sense  had  no  evidences  to 
act  upon  ;  and  although  I  do  not  deny  its 
existence  in  the  abstract,  yet  its  agency  could 
have  had  nothing  to  do  with  your  real  or  im¬ 
aginary  conversion.  Tell  an  African  beneath 
the  tropics  about  ice ,  of  what  avail  will  his 
“  common  sense”  be  to  him  in  determining  the 
truth  or  error  of  your  statement  ? 

But  supposing  he  admits  the  existence  of 
ice,  will  his  “  common  sense”  enable  him  to 
determine  any  of  its  properties  ?  Not  at  all. 
His  “  common  sense”  is  just  as  likely  to  de¬ 
cide  that  ice  will  burn,  as  that  it  will  chill,  the 
hand,  or  other  part  of  the  body  to  which  it 
might  be  applied.  Now  your  case  and  his 
are  equal  illustrations  of  “common  sense,”  in 
the  absence  of  the  elements  from  which  its 
office  is  inseparable,  namely,  knowledge  of  the 
things  to  which  it  is  applied.  For  you,  reli¬ 
gious  knowledge,  at  the  period  of  your  change, 
consisted  of  two  parts  ;  the  one  Presbyterian 
or  Protestant,  which  you  had  yet  to  learn 
the  other  Catholic,  which  you  had  forgotten, 
or  had  never  known.  In  the  absence  of  both 
these  divisions  of  religious  knowledge,  were 
you  not  much  in  the  condition  of  the  African, 
deciding  on  the  properties  of  ice,  by  the  stand¬ 
ard  of  “  common  sense  ?” 

I  think,  sir,  that  you  will  admit  this  reason- 


KIRWAN  UNMASKED. 


25 


ing  to  be  conclusive.  The  premises  are  your 
own,  the  conclusions  are  logically  and  fairly 
deduced.  And  if  so,  then  it  follows  that,  at 
the  time  of  your  pretended  conversion,  you 
had  not  and  could  not  have  had  any  reasons 
for  your  change  of  religion.  And  if  so,  it  fol¬ 
lows  again,  that  in  assigning  those  mentioned 
in  your  Letters  as  inducing  you  to  make  the 
change,  you  have  been  imposing  on  the  good 
faith  of  your  fellow-beings,  and  exhibiting  a 
want  of  that  regard  for  truth  which  would  be 
so  becoming  in  a  minister  of  religion,  and  es¬ 
pecially  one  who  professes  so  high  a  respect 
for  “  common  sense,”  and  so  intimate  an  ac¬ 
quaintance  with  his  “  unfettered  Bible.”  Does 
the  Bible  warrant  such  statements  as  the  fol¬ 
lowing  ? 

You  tell  us  how  the  priest  used  to  question 
you  in  confession,  and  how  you  used  to  an¬ 
swer  him,  (page  20.)  You  complain  that  he 
did  “not  speak  to  you  in  English,”  but  “in 
Latin,”  (same  page.)  You  tell  us  a  few  min¬ 
utes  after  that  you  “did  not  understand  Latin,” 
(page  33.)  Now  the  difficulty  is,  how  could 
you  answer  questions  in  a  language  which  you. 
did  not  understand  ?  It  seems  that  when  you 
went  to  confession  something  like  the  wonders 
of  Pentecost  took  place  between  you  and  the 
priest.  He  spoke  to  you  in  an  unknown 

3 


26 


KIRWAN  UNMASKED. 


tongue,  and  you  answered  him  with  the  utmost 
ease,  although  you  did  not  understand  the  lan¬ 
guage  in  which  he  addressed  you  !  !  There  is 
nothing  more  miraculous  on  record  than  this, 
if  what  you  say  were  true.  But  it  is  not  true. 
The  priest  spoke  to  you  in  English;  you  an¬ 
swered  him  in  English.  Why  then  do  you 
“  bear  false  witness  against”  the  priest,  charg¬ 
ing  him  with  having  spoken  to  you  “  in  Latin,” 
which  “  you  did  not  understand  ?”  Does  Pres¬ 
byterianism  require  such  services  as  this,  at 
your  hands  ?  In  former  times  you  found  “  that 
you  could  play  your  pranks  better  after  con¬ 
fession  than  before  — but  after  thirty  years 
of  reading  the  Bible,  might  not  one  expect  that 
you  would  give  up  ‘‘  playing  your  pranks”  al¬ 
together  ? 

We  have  already  seen  that  when  you  left 
the  Catholic  Church  your  mind  was,  in  your 
own  words,  a  “  perfect  blank  as  to  all  religious 
instruction.”  The  reader  will  be  curious  to 
learn  when  and  how  you  procured  the  neces¬ 
sary  outfit  to  cover  the  mental  nudity  in  which 
you  forsook  us,  and  to  appear  before  t^ie  public 
(as  you  have  appeared  in  your  recent  Letters) 
decked  off  in  the  secondhand  raiment  of  Cath¬ 
olic  Theology.  .  This  is  a  natural  and  not  un¬ 
reasonable  curiosity ;  and  considering  how 
much  your  Letters  are  in  the  style  of  Auto- 


KIRWAN  UNMASKED. 


27 


biography,  I  am  surprised  you  did  not  account 
for  your  Protestant  knowledge  as  well  as  your 
Catholic  ignorance.  Let  me  supply  the  omis¬ 
sion  as  briefly  as  possible. 

It  seems  that  like  other  spars  of  Irish  ship¬ 
wreck  you  drifted  to  these  shores  at  an  early 
age.  You  had  the  good  or  the  bad  fortune  to 
be  picked  up  by  Presbyterian  patrons.  You 
were  a  stranger  and  they  took  you  in.  Wheth¬ 
er  they  were  gifted  or  not  with  that  “  second 
sight”  peculiar  to  the  children  of  the  clouds ,  in 
North  Britain,  it  does  great  credit  to  their 
penetration  to  have  discovered  in  you  (under 
all  the  disadvantages  of  that  ignorance  and 
infidelity  to  which  you  have  so  often  directed 
our  attention)  what  poetry  has  called, 

A  gem  of  purest  ray  serene. 

LTnder  the  influence  of  this  benevolent  anti¬ 
cipation,  they  sent  you  to  college.  As  your 
mind  was  a  “  perfect  blank,”  of  course  you  had 
nothing  to  unlearn.  There  was  no  popish 
rubbish  left  from  the  ruins  of  the  former  edi¬ 
fice.  The  foundations  were  unobstructed  and 
clear,  and  the  new  architects  had  only  to  pro¬ 
ceed  with  their  work  and  build  you  up  ac¬ 
cording  to  the  approved  rules  of  Presbyterian 
“  constructiveness.”  They  did  so  build  you 
up,  accordingly.  And  now,  you  are  what  you 
are. 


28 


KIRWAN  UNMASKED. 


In  assigning  reasons  why  you  left  the  Cath¬ 
olic  Church  and  now  cannot  return,  I  am  sur¬ 
prised  you  have  omitted  all  this.  To  most 
Catholics,  and  indeed  to  many  Protestants,  this 
reason  alone  would  be  quite  sufficient  to  ac¬ 
count  for  it  all. 

And  yet,  there  is  nothing  in  the  poverty 
which  caused  you  to  fall  into  such  hands,  of 
which  it  would  not  be  great  weakness,  on  your 
part,  to  be  in  the  least  ashamed.  If  circum¬ 
stances  had  not  placed  you  in  a false  position, 
I  think  you  would  feel  proud  of  the  poverty 
which  you  inherited  from  your  Irish  parents ; 
for  it  is  the  most  incontestable  evidence  that 
your  Catholic  ancestors  were  “  true  men,”  in 
their  generation.  If  they  had  been  unprinci¬ 
pled  hypocrites,  capable  of  betraying  their 
conscience  and  their  God,  at  almost  any  period 
within  the  last  three  hundred  years,  they  might 
have  renounced  their  religion,  and  pocketed 
the  bribe  which  the  Gospel,  as  “  by  law  estab¬ 
lished,'’  had  set  apart  as  the  recompense  of 
apostacy  from  the  Catholic  faith.  But  they 
did  not.  They  supposed  that  their  posterity 
would  be  worthy  of  them ; — they  supposed 
that  one  Esau,  selling  his  birthright  for  a  mess 
of  pottage,  was  enough  in  the  history  of  our 
race ;  they  submitted  to  be  plundered  of  their 
earthly  goods  ;  they  submitted  to  be  deprived 


KIRWAN  UNMASKED. 


29 


of  education  ;  the  cruel  edict  of  ignorance  thus 
enacted  against  them,  was  a  Protestant  edict ; 
they  submitted  to  its  penalties  ;  but,  on  the 
other  hand,  they  asserted  the  right  and  supe¬ 
riority  of  glorious  principle  over  base  and 
mercenary  interest ;  they  proved  that  the  ma¬ 
terial  tyrant  cannot  vanquish  the  immaterial 
and  immortal  mind  ;  they  bore  and  defied  his 
torture,  while  they  writhed  under  it ;  they 
spurned  and  repelled  his  offered  bribe  of  apos- 
tacy,  whilst  to  human  view  it  was  the  only 
alternative  between  them  and  ignorance,  pov¬ 
erty,  starvation,  and  death.  But  they  wel¬ 
comed  all  sooner  than  betray  principle  or  vio¬ 
late  conscience. 

O,  sir,  they  were  glorious  men  and  true,  our 
Irish  Catholic  ancestors  ;  I  am  prouder  of  them, 
so  far  as  I  am  concerned,  than  if  at  the  sacri¬ 
fice  of  truth,  or  honor,  or  principle,  they  had 
bequeathed  to  me  the  titles  and  wealth  of  the 
Beresfords.  Nor  can  I  believe  that  you,  in 
your  heart,  entertain  any  other  sentiments  in 
their  regard.  You,  like  myself,  have  borne  the 
penalty  of  their  constancy  to  truth  and  con¬ 
science  ;  and  in  your  pulpit  in  Elizabethtown, 
in  your  most  fervid  and  eloquent  appeals  to 
your  Presbyterian  audience,  if  a  recollection  of 
your  heroic  and  invincible  Catholic  forefathers 
should,  perchance,  flash  across  your  memory, 


30 


KIRWAN  UNMASKED. 


you  will  feel  proud  of  them ,  and  ashamed  of 
yourself.  “  How  came  you  there  ?”  If  I  held 
you  capable  of  other  sentiments  I  should  be 
uttering  a  libel  on  the  Irish  heart  in  particular, 
and  on  human  nature  in  general. 

Sir,  I  think  you  made  a  great  mistake  in 
publishing  your  Letters  anonymously ;  espe¬ 
cially  when  you  took  the  unmanly  and  unwar¬ 
rantable  liberty  of  blazoning  forth  my  name  in 
connection  with  them,  whilst  you  concealed 
your  own.  But  having  done  this,  you  have 
made  another  great  mistake  in  allowing  the  soft, 
warm  breath  of  thoughtless  flattery  to  melt  so 
prematurely  the  waxen  ties  of  your  mask. 
Your  Letters  have  been  compared  to  those  of 
Junius,  but  you  have  not  imitated  your  model 
successfully,  in  the  important  affair  of  keeping 
your  own  secret.  You  have  made  another 
mistake  still,  in  weaving  in  your  own  biography, 
your  own  personality ,  as  the  woof  of  your 
polemical  web.  Another  mistake  still  you  have 
made,  in  bringing  in  your  parents  to  embellish 
your  pages.  It  would  be  wrong  for  you,  I 
suppose,  in  your  new  light,  to  pray  for  the  soul 
of  your  deceased  father ;  but  you  might  have 
written  a  very  clever  book  against  popery 
without  invading  his  grave  or  disturbing  his 
ashes  at  all.  The  same  may  be  said  in  gen¬ 
eral  of  those  little  stories  with  which  your  first 


KIRWAN  UNMASKED. 


31 


Letters  are  adorned,  about  “  yourself/’  and  your 
“  house,”  and  your  “  hall,”  and  the  “  dark  room 
up  stairs,”  and  the  “  drunken  priest”  to  whom 
you  ministered  brandy,  &c.  &c.  These  “ awful 
disclosures”  would  do  very  well  in  the  pages  of 
Maria  Monk,  Miss  Partridge,  or  some  of  the 
other  vestals  of  their  class,  of  whom  the  Cath¬ 
olic  Church  is  not  worthy.  Even  in  the  wri¬ 
tings  of  Monk  Leahy,  I  do  not  say  they  would 
be  out  of  place. 

But  in  the  production  of  a  scholar  and  a 
gentleman  like  you,  I  am  sorry  to  see  them. 
They  have  a  kind  of  mean ,  “  tell-tale”  appear¬ 
ance — they  are  a  betrayal  of  former  friends  and 
associates,  which,  to  my  mind  at  least,  indi¬ 
cates  the  absence  of  manly,  generous  feeling, 
as  well  as  of  elevated  taste.  But  as  you  have 
thought  otherwise,  I  must  review  them  some¬ 
what  at  length  in  my  next  letter.  Meantime 
I  remain  with  pity  and  good  wishes  as  usual. 

John  Hughes,  Bishop  of  New  York, 


32 


KIRWAN  UNMASKED. 


LETTER  IV. 


TO  KIRWAN, 

alias  the  Rev.  Nicholas  Murray,  D.  D., 

Of  Elizabethtown,  New  Jersey. 

Dear  Sir  : — 

I  think  it  has  been  clearly  proved  in  my  last 
letter,  and  from  evidences  the  more  indisputa¬ 
ble,  as  they  are  furnished  by  your  own  pen, 
that  you  had  no  reason,  either  intellectual  or 
moral,  for  leaving  the  Catholic  Church. — The 
only  reason,  deduced  by  inference  from  what 
you  have  written  of  yourself,  will  be  found  in 
a  thick,  dark  cloud  of  ignorance  and  infidelity, 
such  as,  I  trust  in  God,  never  enveloped  the 
mind  of  any  other  Irish  Catholic  peasant  at  the 
age  of  eighteen,  either  since  or  before. 

Yet,  sir,  I  do  not  believe  that  your  ignorance 
of  the  Catholic  religion,  when  you  left  it,  was 
so  unmitigated  as  you  pretend.  It  will  be  very 
difficult  for  you,  however,  either  to  retract  or 
explain,  in  your  real  character,  what  you  have 
published  of  yourself  under  the  duplicity  of  your 
mask. 

I  know  not  what  intoxicating  influence  flat- 


KIRWAN  UNMASKED. 


33 


tery  and  self-complacency  may  have  produced 
on  a  mind  and  memory  like  yours.  But  I  do 
know  that  whoever  writes  under  a  mask,  and 
in  a  character  even  partially  feigned,  and  es¬ 
pecially  if  he  writes  on  any  grave  subject,  in 
which  mankind  take  a  deep  interest,  does  so 
at  the  imminent  peril  of  his  own  reputation. 
He  is  nearly  certain  to  be  found  out.  And 
when  this  happens,  his  attempts  to  reconcile 
the  discrepancies  between  his  assumed  and 
his  real  character  are  sure  to  produce,  in  the 
public  mind,  a  feeling  of  ridicule  not  unmingled 
with  a  feeling  of  contempt. 

In  the  introductory  note  prefixed  to  your 
letters  I  learn  that  they  were  furnished  to 
Samuel  I.  Prime,  “under  the  injunction  of 
secrecy  as  to  the  author’s  name.”  If  you  lived 
in  Spain  or  Sicily,  there  might  be  some  reason 
for  this  unnecessary  precaution.  But  if  your 
purpose  was  to  tell  “  the  truth,”  even  “  the  whole 
truth,”  and  “  nothing  but  the  truth,”  in  your 
testimony  for  Presbyterianism  or  against  Cath¬ 
olicity,  what  motive  could  you  have  had  in  this 
free  country  for  this  studious  concealment  of 
your  name  ?  Here  the  press  is  free,  and  writing 
against  Popery  is  even  at  a  premium.  Why 
then,  as  an  honest  man,  conceal  your  name  ? 
This  looks  badly.  Mr.  Prime,  indeed,  loaned 
you  his  endorsement ,  whatever  that  may  be 


34 


KIRWAN  UNMASKED. 


worth.  He  introduces  you  to  the  public  vouch’ 
ing  for  your  veracity  in  these  words :  “  .  .  .  /  It 
is  proper  to  say  that  the  writer’s  character  is 
an  abundant  guarantee  for  the  fidelity  of  all 
matters  of  fact  here  stated,  and  that  he  is  pre¬ 
pared  to  maintain  them,  if  they  should  be  called 
in  question.”  Now,  sir,  there  are  some  things 
which  you  state  as  matters  of  fact,  which  I  beg 
leave  most  emphatically  to  call  in  question.  I 
hope  you  may  be  able  to  maintain  them,  or  if 
not,  I  hope  Mr.  Prime  will  be  willing  to  forfeit 
his  recognizances. 

I.  You  state,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  that  nearly 
at  the  age  of  manhood,  “  on  as  full  an  exami¬ 
nation  of  the  subject  as  you  could  give  it,  you 
came  to  the  conclusion  that  you  could  not  re¬ 
main  a  Roman  Catholic ” — p.  12.  Now,  sir, 
I  refer  to  your  own  testimony,  quoted  in  my 
last  letter,  as  proof  that  your  mind  “  was  a  per¬ 
fect  blank  as  to  all  religious  instruction,”  and 
I  insist  that  therefore  you  did  not  give  the 
Catholic  religion  as  full  an  examination  as  you 
could,  for  you  could,  at  least,  have  revived  in 
yourself  the  knowledge  of  “  the  Catechism” 
which  “  you  had  forgotten.” 

II.  You  state,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  that  “  in 
one  of  the  large  interior  towns  of  Ireland, 
....  you  resided  in  a  house,  and  over  the 
store  in  which  you  ivere  then  a  clerk.” — p.  13. 


Kin  WAN  UNMASKEr. 


35 


You  then  proceed  to  tell  us  about  a  drunken 
priest,  Father  B.,  whom  you  helped  out  of  the 
gutter,  and  wind  up  the  whole  narrative  with 
the  remark  “  and  young  as  I  was.”  This 
phrase,  in  ordinary  language,  would  refer  to  a 
period  as  far  back  as  memory  goes — a  period 
in  which  reason  was  but  in  the  dawn  of  its  de¬ 
velopment — say  8,  9,  or  10  years  of  age;  but 
at  that  period,  if  we  can  believe  you,  you  were 
already  a  “  clerk  in  a  store  !”  Pray,  dear  Kir- 
wan,  what  kind  of  a  clerk  were  you  ?  “  Young 
as  you  were,”  by  your  Qjwn  account,  you  were 
able  “  to  shut  the  store  windows  at  night” — 
you  were  able  “  to  help  a  man  out  of  the  gut¬ 
ter” — you  were  able  to  “  clean  off  his  Reve¬ 
rence” — you  were  able  to  “  give  him  his  brandy 
next  morning,”'  and  yet  you  were  just  in  the 
period  of  dawning  reason  and  earliest  memory, 
in  which  you  tell  us  that  “  young  as  you  were,” 
all  this  made  an  impression  on  you.  The  cir¬ 
cumstantial  part  of  the  story  is  still  more  won¬ 
derful  than  the  leading  facts.  For  instance, 
you  could  not  see  the  man  in  the  gutter,  and 
you  were  “  attracted  towards  him  by  a  singular 
noise.”  Pray  what  kind  of  a  noise  is  a  singu¬ 
lar  noise  ?  And  then,  the  night  was  so  dark 
that  had  it  not  been  for  the  singular  noise  he 
might  have  perished.  But  on  the  other  hand, 
it  was  light  enough  to  recognise  “  Father  B., 


36 


KIRWAN  UNMASKED. 


the  miracle  worker.”  And  instead  of  helping  E 
the  poor  man,  as  a  decent  “  clerk  in  the  store  E 
should  have  done,  you  ran  in  blabbing  to  the  lady  jfl 
of  the  house,  that  Father  B.  was  drunk  in  the  1 
street.  And  the  “  lady  of  the  house”  gave  the  j 
“  clerk  in  the  store”  “  a  stunning  slap  on  the 
side  of  the  face,”  and  “  the  clerk  in  the  store” 

“  staggered  under  the  blow,  and  then  turned 
found  in  the  best  nature  in  the  world  to  assist  I 
in  cleaning  off  his  reverence.”  Next  morning 
you  “  gave  him  his  brandy,  and  young  as 
the  clerk  in  the  store  ^vas,  all  this  made  an  im¬ 
pression  upon  him.  Sir,  if  the  dullest  lawyei 
in  the  country  had  you  under  cross-examina¬ 
tion  on  this  subject,  he  could  not  fail  to  con¬ 
vulse  the  gravity  of  the  bench  with  irrepressi¬ 
ble  laughter.  Observe,  I  do  not  raise  any 
question  as  to  whether  the  priest  was  drunk  or 
not ;  I  let  that  pass.  I  have  myself  seen 
among  the  convicts  of  the  penitentiary,  indi¬ 
viduals  pointed  out  as  having  once  been  respec¬ 
table  Presbyterian  ministers,  and  who  were 
there  for  crimes  even  more  heinous  than  drunk¬ 
enness.  But  no  man  of  right  feelings  would 
pretend  to  justify  an  opposite  religion,  or  to 
condemn  theirs,  on  account  of  their  crimes 
and  misfortunes.  I  beg  leave,  then,  to  call  in 
question  the  facts  which  you  state  in  your 
circumstantial  evidence  in  this  case.  And  I 


KIRWAN  UNMASKED. 


37 


direct  your  attention  particularly  to  the  con¬ 
tradiction  implied  by  the  fact  that  you  were  a 
child  at  the  same  time  that  you  were  “  a  clerk 
in  the  store.” 

III.  You  state  as  a  fact  that,  on  your  father’s 
demise,  your  mother  paid  the  priest  money 
enough  to  have  his  soul  prayed  for  by  name, 
on  every  Sunday  for  two  or  three  years.  That, 
when  the  money  was  expended,  his  name  was 
given  out  no  more.  That,  when  she  inquired 
the  cause  of  this,  the  priest  told  her,  that  “ your 
father  s  soul  was  still  in  Purgatory ,  but  that 
she  had  forgotten  to  send  in  the  yearly  tax  at 
the  time  it  was  d,ue .” — (p.  14.)  You  add,  that 
with  this  fact  in  particular,  you  are  entirely 
conversant. 

Now,  sir,  I  question  this  “fact.”  I  deny  this 
“fact.”  I  pronounce  it  to  be  &  fabrication 
and  not  a  fact.  And  if  the  courtesy  of  lan¬ 
guage  authorized  it,  I  should  feel  bound  to 
designate  it  by  a  still  harsher  word.  No  priest 
would  ever  dare  to  decide  when,  or  whether 
any  soul  was  released  from  Purgatory.  No 
Irish  mother,  or  wife,  or  widow,  would  ever 
speak  to  a  priest  in  the  manner  in  which  you 
describe  your  mother  as  having  spoken  to  him. 
It  is  true  she  had  not,  like  her  son,  the  benefit 
of  a  Presbyterian  education.  She  bore  the 
penalty  of  her  ancestors,  and  her  creed.  But 

4 


38 


KIRWAN  UNMASKED. 


she  knew  the  principles  of  the  Catholic  faith 
better  than  you  do ;  and  your  superior  general 
information  does  not  authorize  you  to  envelop 
her  in  this  gross  imputation  of  ignorance  as  to 
her  faith.  I  am  willing  to  go  to  any  reasonable 
expense  to  prove  this  a  fabrication,  if  either 
you  or  Mr.  Prime  have  the  courage  to  meet  me, 
in  a  formal  investigation. 

IV.  You  state  that  “Father  M.  held  fre¬ 
quently  his  confessions  at  your  house.”  “  That 
he  sat  in  a  dark  room  up  stairs  with  one  or  more 
candles  on  a  table  before  him.”  That  “  those 
going  to  confession  followed  each  other  on  their 
knees  from  the  front  door,  through  the  hall,  up 
the  stairs,  and  to  the  door  of  the  room.” — (p. 
19.) 

Now,  sir,  your  house  is  likely  to  become  as 
well  known  as  Shakspeare’s.  A  relative  of 
yours  has  taken  the  pains  to  describe  it,  in  a 
late  number  of  the  Freeman’s  Journal.  Ac¬ 
cording  to  him,  it  would  be  a  building  in  the 
primitive  style  of  Irish  architecture.  The  same, 
very  likely,  which  prevailed  when  the  round 
towers  were  constructed.  Up  stairs  would  be 
up  a  ladder  to  what  is  called  a  loft.  And  if 
Father  M.  heard  confessions  there,  I  can  see 
the  great  propriety  of  one  or  more  candles  on 
the  table.  For  according  to  the  primitive  ar¬ 
chitecture  of  Ireland,  light  was  received  into 


KIRWAN  UNMASKED. 


39 


the  dwellings,  either  horizontally,  by  the  door, 
or  vertically  by  the  chimney.  The  former  was 
made  for  the  purpose  of  ingress  and  egress,  and 
the  latter  for  the  double  purpose  of  always  let¬ 
ting  the  smoke  out ,  and  sometimes  letting  the 
day  in.  If  then,  Father  M.  had  heard  confes¬ 
sions  in  such  a  place,  without  one  or  more 
candles  on  the  table,  what  a  beautiful  theme 
this  circumstance  would  have  afforded  to  a 
morbid  imagination  like  yours. 

Sir,  I  feel  somewhat  humbled  at  being  obliged, 
as  a  reviewer,  to  notice  this,  as  well  as  other 
portions  of  your  Kirwan’s  letters,  which,  in  my 
opinion,  propriety  should  have  induced  you  to 
leave  under  the  protection  of  domestic  privacy. 
If  you  were  still  a  Catholic,  like  yo#ir  pious 
albeit  uneducated,  mother,  you  would  feel  rather 
proud  than  otherwise  of  what  appears  to  be  the 
fact  as  regards  the  humility  of  your  ancestral 
“halls.”  Poverty  is  not  regarded,  by  those 
with  whom  you  now  associate,  as  respectable. 
And  yet  it  has  been  ennobled  by  the  example 
of  Our  Redeemer  and  His  Apostles.  It  is  still 
ennobled,  in  the  estimation  of  the  Catholic 
Church,  when  it  is  selected  by  voluntary  choice, 
and  is  never  dishonorable,  except  when  it  is 
immediately  connected  with,  or  resulting  from 
moral  guilt. 

Our  glorious  Catholic  ancestors  were  driven 


i 


40 


KIRWAN  UNMASKED. 


back  into  the  cabins  of  Irish  primitive  life ;  and 
Protestantism,  in  anticipation  of  the  good  things 
of  heaven,  made  sure  also  of  the  good  things  of 
the  earth.  The  churches,  the  glebe  lands,  the 
monasteries,  the  castles  and  domains  of  our 
Catholic  forefathers,  became  the  usurped  in¬ 
heritance  of  Protestantism,  by  right  of  legal 
spoliation,  from  the  period  when  the  Reforma¬ 
tion  took  the  interpretation  of  the  Bible  into 
its  own  hand — aided  of  course  by  acts  of  Par¬ 
liament. 

When,  therefore,  you  describe  the  Catholic 
“  Priests”  “moving  about  as  spectres,  as  if  afraid 
of  the  light  of  day/’  you  trace  a  picture  which 
seems  to  call  up  to  my  imagination  the  lives  ol 
the  Apos^es,  and  of  their  Divine  Master,  going  v 
about  meekly  and  unobtrusively  in  the  discharge 
of  their  heavenly  mission ; — whilst  the  contrast 
suggested  by  the  antithesis  as  in  favor  of  the 
Presbyterian  ministry,  would  suggest  to  my 
mind  the  idea  of  an  inflated  clerical  pedant  ** 
makes  the  avenues  of  life  narrow  wherever  he 
passes  in  bustling  and  gassy  rotundity.  But  I 
merely  hope  that  you,  judged  by  your  own  pen, 
are  not  a  fair  specimen  of  the  class  to  which 
you  now  belong.  At  all  events,  I  “call  in 
question”  the  description  of  “our  house,”  and 
hope  that  you  and  Mr.  Prime  will  maintain  it. 

V.  You  state  as  a  fact,  that  “on  your  first 


RIRWAN  UNMASKED. 


41 


remembered  journey  to  Dublin,  you  passed  by 
a  place  called,  if  you  mistake  not,  St.  John’s 
Well.”  You  tell  me  that  I  know  it  is  one  of 
the  holy  wells.  I  answer  that  I  know  nothing 
about  it.  But  you  appear  all  at  once  singularly 
scrupulous,  and  I  look  upon  the  phrase,  “  If  I 
mistake  not,”  as  equivalent  to  the  phrase, 
“  Young  as  I  was,”  when  you  were  already  a 
“  clerk  in  the  store.”  I  cannot  dwell  on  your 
evidence  respecting  what  was  “called,  if  you 
mistake  not,  St.  John’s  Well;”  but  I  have  no 
hesitation  in  saying  that  the  story  is,  either  in 
whole  or  in  part,  a  fabrication.  It  is  found  on 
page  21  of  your  first  series,  and  I  call  your 
attention  to  it,  in  the  hope  that  you  and  Mr 
Prime  shall  maintain  what  you  have  there 
stated  as  facts. 

VI.  The  story  about  the  sun  “  dancing”  in 
the  heavens  and  in  the  chapels  on  Easter  Sun¬ 
day  morning,  and  the  attempt  to  produce  a 
delusive  corresponding  phenomenon  in  the 
chapel  by  “  an  individual  managing  concealed 
mirrors,  so  as  to  produce  the  wonderful  effect,” 
(p.  27,)  I  pronounce  to  be  equally  a  fabrication, 
or  a  mere  playful  supposition,  uttered  for  the 
amusement  of  children.  I  hope  that  you  and 
your  endorser  will  see  to  this  matter  also. 

VII.  Again  :  you  tell  us  as  a  fact,  that  you 
“  saw  good  papists  eating  eggs  and  fish  and 

4* 


42 


KIRWAN  UNMASKED. 


getting  drunk  on  these  days,  (Fridays  and 
Saturdays.)  But  that  this  was  no  violation  of 
the  laws  of  the  Church.” — (p.  32.)  This,  sir, 
as  far  as  regards  what  you  call  “  good  papists” 
and  “  getting  drunk,”  and  yet  not  violating  the 
laws  of  the  Church,  is  a  fabrication. 

This  same  page  records  the  turning  point  of 
your  life,  the  crisis  of  your  conversion.  You 
came  to  the  conclusion  that  as  regards  the 
eating  of  meat  on  one  day,  and  not  on  another, 
God  could  not  make  it  a  sin  by  distinction  of 
days — so  that  if  a  man  can  plough  on  Thurs¬ 
day,  by  your  rule,  God  cannot  make  it  a  sin 
for  him  to  do  so  on  Sunday.  And  here,  in 
point  of  fact,  is  the  first,  and  perhaps  the  best, 
reason  which  your  letters  furnish  for  your  con- 
*  version.  It  seems  that  after  mature  delibera¬ 
tion,  you  found  that  to  forbid  a  man’s  eating 
meat  on  Friday  is  an  unreasonable  regulation, 
and  you  rejected  it.  It  would  appear  by  infer¬ 
ence  that  as  regards  meat,  on  such  days,  what 
your  conscience  approved  your  appetite  ap¬ 
propriated  ;  and  with  singular  naivete,  you  tell 
us  that  “  as  far  as  you  now  remember  this  was 
your  first  step  towards  light  and  freedom .” — 
(P.  32.) 

By-the-by,  this  calls  up  a  period  in  the  ca¬ 
lamities  of  Ireland  which  had  almost  passed 
into  oblivion;  and  which  corresponds  more 


KIRWAN  UNMASKED. 


43 


or  less  with  that  of  your  conversion  from  Po- 
pery. 

About  twenty-five  or  thirty  years  ago,  Lord 
Farnham,  and  other  gentlemen  of  the  evan¬ 
gelical  nobility,  introduced  into  Ireland  a  reli¬ 
gious  movement  called  “  the  second  Reforma¬ 
tion.”  It  was  a  season  of  distress  among  the 
peasantry,  such  as  succeeds,  year  by  year,  in 
the  history  of  our  unfortunate  native  country. 
Lord  Farnham  had  almost  obtained  a  patent 
from  the  legislature  for  the  efficiency,  and  ad¬ 
mirable  simplicity  of  the  new  contrivance  for 
converting  the  Irish.  It  was  this.  The  kitch¬ 
ens  were  turned  into  scriptural  reading-rooms 
for  the  starving  population  of  the  neighbor¬ 
hood,  once  a  week.  The  day  selected  hap¬ 
pened  to  be  Friday,  in  almost  all  cases.  After 
Bible-reading,  soup  was  given  out  instead  of 
syllogisms,  and  the  “  second  Reformation” 
went  on  admirably  until  the  potatoes  of  har¬ 
vest  became  mature  enough  for  the  people’s 
use.  Lord  Farnham  and  his  colleagues  sup¬ 
posed  that  if  the  landed  proprietors  and  gen¬ 
try  could  only  succeed  in  establishing  an  ami¬ 
cable  understanding  between  the  conscience  and 
the  stomach  of  the  “  lower  orders,”  Ireland 
would  soon  become  a  Protestant  country.  But 
I  need  not  dwell  upon  it,  as  you  are  old  enough 
to  remember  how  it  was  ridiculed  by  Cobbett 


44 


KIRWAN  UNMASKED. 


and  other  writers  wherever  the  English  lan¬ 
guage  was  spoken. 

Now  I  do  not  say  that  you  are  a  child  of 
the  “  second  Reformation/’  but  the  fact  of  your 
having  made  the  first  step  towards  light  and 
freedom  through  the  medium  of  something 
like  a  Friday-beefsteak,  looks  very  much  like  it. 

See,  Rev.  Nicholas  Murray  of  Elizabeth¬ 
town,  into  what  a  position  your  “  playing  of 
pranks”  behind  Kirwan’s  mask  has  betrayed 
you !  ! 

Resides  the  bow  which  Mr.  Prime  has  vol¬ 
unteered  you,  you  have  made  one  for  yourself 
— still  under  the  mask,  however.  You  tell  us 
that,  even  before  “  you  took  up  your  pen  you 
were  not  unknown  to  the  men  of  our  age,  nor 
unsolicited.  .  .  .”  “  The  men  of  our  age”  (! ! !) 

— or  of  any  age,  are  very  few,  and  posterity 
has  reserved  to  itself,  almost  absolutely,  the 
right  of  determining  who  they  are.  To  save 
your  modesty,  therefore,  I  am  obliged  to  sup¬ 
pose  that  the  printer  has  made  a  mistake  here, 
and  that  if  one  could  have  the  benefit  of  a  peep 
at  your  manuscript,  it  would  be  found  that  you 
had  written,  “  the  men  of  our  (vill)-age.” 

Ah,  sir,  it  seems  that  your  misfortune  through 
life  has  been  to  have  been  under  the  influence 
of  bad  advisers — since  you  tell  us  you  were 
“  solicited”  to  write  against  Popery.  The  cir- 


KIRWAN  UNMASKED. 


45 


cumstance  reminds  me  of  an  anecdote  which 
I  have  lately  read  in  a  London  paper,  and 
which  I  trust  will  not  offend  you,  as  it  has  al¬ 
ready  been  employed  in  a  description  of  Eng¬ 
land’s  highest  Protestant  nobility.  It  seems, 
a  drover  found  it  difficult  to  keep  his  cattle 
together  in  the  crowded  approaches  to  the 
English  metropolis.  And  in  his  extremity  he 
called  out  to  his  neighbor,  “  I  wish  you  would 
loan  me  a  bark  of  your  dog.”  You  know,  sir, 
that  broad  ridicule  is  the  forte  of  the  English 
as  compared  to  the  French,  and  a  Cockney 
wit  tells  us  that  Lord  John  Russell  has  turned 
the  drover’s  hint  into  the  philosophy  of  poli¬ 
tics,  and  that  whenever  his  herd  betray  a  ten¬ 
dency  to  straggle  from  the  whig  path,  he  “  bor¬ 
rows  a  bark”  from  Sir  Robert  Peel.  However 
this  may  be,  I  am  satisfied  that  “  the  men  of 
our  age,”  if  there  be  any  such,  would  never 
have  borrowed  a  bark  of  you. 

This  letter  is  already  too  long,  and  I  must 
bring  it  to  a  close.  But  in  doing  so,  I  cannot 
forget  how  often  you  have  told  us  that  you 
were  once  an  infidel.  There  are  evidences 
scattered  up  and  down  through  your  letters, 
which,  to  an  unprejudiced  and  impartial  read¬ 
er,  would  make  it  appear  doubtful  whether  you 
are  not  still  so.  Some  of  these  I  shall  present 
in  my  next.  I  shall  not  venture  to  pronounce 


46 


KIRWAN  UNMASKED. 


an  opinion  on  the  subject,  as  the  Almighty 
alone  can  penetrate  the  hearts  of  men. 

In  the  mean  time,  however,  I  remain,  with 
increasing  pity,  but  with  undiminished  good¬ 
will. 

John  Hughes,  Bishop  of  New  York. 


KIRWAN  UNMASKED. 


47 


LETTER  y. 


TO  KIRWAN, 

alias  the  Rev.  Nicholas  Murray,  D.  D., 

Of  Elizabethtown,  New  Jersey. 

Dear  Sir  : — 

It  is  deeply  to  be  regretted  that  the  serpent 
of  infidelity  was  ever  permitted  to  nestle  in 
your  bosom ; — for  when  I  consider  that  you 
reduce  the  standard  of  revelation  to  the  test 
of  common  sense — when  I  consider  the  loose¬ 
ness  of  your  moral  principles,  so  far  forth  as 
they  are  exhibited  by  your  own  pen — when  I 
behold  the  spirit  of  Voltaire  and  Thomas  Paine 
in  the  profanity  and  ribaldry  with  which  you 
treat  every  sacred  subject  which  your  common 
sense  does  not  approve,  I  am  compelled  to  say 
that  even  on  the  supposition  that  infidelity  had 
been  expelled  from  your  breast  before  the 
writing  of  your  letters,  still, 

“  The  trail  of  the  serpent  is  over  them  all.” 

Your  moral  principles,  as  set  forth  by  your¬ 
self,  even  in  my  regard,  are  much  more  in 
keeping  with  what  might  be  expected  from  a 


48 


KIRWAN  UNMASKED 


skeptic  of  the  world,  than  from  a  clergyman 
of  any  Christian  denomination.  You  have  the 
grossness  to  impute  to  me  that  I  am  conscious¬ 
ly  a  deceiver  of  my  fellow-creatures,  and  yet 
you  do  not  hesitate  to  express  respect  for  my 
character.  Is  this  a  principle  of  Presbyterian 
inculcation  ?  Or  has  it  shot  up  through  the 
Confession  of  Faith  from  the  older  and  deeper 
root  of  your  early  infidelity  ? 

Again,  you  urge  me  to  renounce  the  Catho¬ 
lic  religion,  in  which,  you  suppose,  I  do  not 
believe;  and  yet,  with  that  loose  morality 
which  would  better  become  a  professed  infi¬ 
del,  you  implicitly  encourage  me  to  persevere 
in  carrying  on  the  supposed  villany  of  decep¬ 
tion  !  The  reader  would  hardly  believe  this 
statement  possible,  so  I  shall  quote  your  own 
words  to  prove  it.  You  say:  “ And  since  in 
the  maturity  of  my  judgment  I  have  examined 
this  matter ,  I  have  greatly  commended  your 
wisdom  in  withholding  the  Bible  from  the  peo¬ 
ple.  If  I  were  a  Bishop  or  a  Priest  of  your 
church  I  would  do  the  same.” — p.  29.  So  then, 
dear  Kirwan,  you  have  the  candor  to  avow  on 
principle,  and  in  the  “ maturity  of  your  judg¬ 
ment,”  that  if  your  lot  had  been  cast  among 
villains,  you  would  be  as  great  a  villain  as 
any  of  them.  Is  this  avowal  worthy  of  even 
an  infidel  ? 


KIRWAN  UNMASKED. 


49 


That  you  should  be  where  and  what  you 
now  are,  is  easily  accounted  for — by  the  ig¬ 
norance  of  your  youth  which  you  have  de¬ 
scribed,  and  the  poverty  which  you  have  not 
described.  Ignorance  and  poverty  are  mys¬ 
terious  dispensations  of  God’s  providence. 
And,  on  that  account,  I  would  treat  with  in¬ 
dulgence  whatever  errors  in  your  early  life 
are  to  be  ascribed  to  either.  But  for  the  de¬ 
liberate  conclusions,  uttered  in  your  recent 
letters,  and  in  the  “  maturity  of  your  judgment,” 
in  which  you  avow  yourself  ready  to  act  an 
evil  part  with  Bishops  and  Priests,  on  the  mere 
condition  of  your  having  been  one  of  them,  I 
cannot  but  hold  you  immorally  responsible. 

Thank  God,  however,  you  are  neither  a 
Bishop  nor  a  Priest ;  and  your  once  having 
been  talked  of  as  a  candidate  for  Maynooth, 
w*as,  happily  for  the  Church,  only  “  talk”  after 
all.  You  are  a  Presbyterian  minister  in  Eliz¬ 
abethtown,  where  your  ministry  can  do  no 
harm  ; — for,  if  your  creed  be  true,  those  who 
are  foreordained  to  eternal  life,  will  be  saved 
with ,  as  well  as  without,  your  pastoral  offices. 

In  my  last  letter  I  showed,  according  to  your 
own  account,  that  the  prohibition  to  eat  flesh- 
meat  on  Fridays  and  Saturdays  was  the  first 
practical  reason  for  your  change  of  religion. 
It  was  an  “.unreasonable  reguGtnn,  and  you 

5 


50 


KIRWAN  UNMASKED 


rejected  it ;  and  as  far  as  you  now  remember, 
this  was  your  first  step  towards  light  and  free¬ 
dom.” — p.  32.  On  the  very  next  page  we  find 
you  soliloquizing  in  a  style  of  infidel  rational¬ 
ism,  which  Pagan  Greece,  or  Protestant  Ger¬ 
many,  could  hardly  have  surpassed.  “  I  thus 
reasoned  with  myself ;  God  is  a  spiritual  and 
intelligent  Being,  and  he  requires  an  intelli¬ 
gent  worship.  What  worship  I  render  him  in 
the  Mass  I  know  not,”  (of  course,  since  you 
had  forgotten  your  catechism,)  “  my  intelli¬ 
gent  worship  only  is  acceptable  to  Him,  and  is 
beneficial  to  me.  I  am  a  rational  being,  and  I 
degrade  my  nature,  and  insult  my  Maker,  in 
offering  to  Him  a  worship  in  which  neither 
my  reason,  nor  his  intelligence,  is  consulted.” 
p.  33.  Now,  dear  Kirwan,  when  we  consider 
the  state  of  your  mind  at  the  period  when  this 
pretended  soliloquy  occurred,  “  a  perfect  blank 
as  to  all  religious  instruction,”  it  becomes  a 
grave  question,  which  I  leave  to  the  decision 
of  casuists  in  mental  philosophy,  whether  or 
not,  in  the  higher  ordinary  sense  of  the  term, 
you  could  rightfully  call  yourself  a  “  rational 
being.” 

But  I  make  the  quotation  for  another  pur¬ 
pose.  The  whole  passage  betrays  a  strong 
affinity  to  the  spirit  of  Paine's  “  Age  of  Rea¬ 
son.”  The  high  contracting  parties  were  God 


KIRWAN  UNMASKED. 


51 


on  the  one  side,  and  yourself  on  the  other. 
Both  were  intelligent  beings — your  Maker 
would  be  insulted ,  and  your  nature  would  be 
degraded ,  if  you  held  the  intercourse  of  wor¬ 
ship  with  Him,  except  on  the  principle  of  re¬ 
ciprocal  intelligence.  You  had  just  tasted  of 
the  forbidden  food  on  the  preceding  page,  and 
acquired  the  knowledge  of  “  good  and  evil.” 
You  had  partaken  of  Egypt’s  flesh-pots,  and 
the  manna  had  become  insipid  and  distasteful. 
For  your  mind,  there  was  no  “intelligence”  in 
it,  and  so,  very  naturally,  you  gave  up — the 
Mass. 

But  now,  the  floodgates  of  the  knowledge  of 
good  and  evil  being  once  opened,  we  may  ex¬ 
pect  the  mysteries  of  revelation  to  be  inun¬ 
dated  by  the  deluge  of  your  “intelligence,” 
your  “reason,”  your  “common  sense.”  Ac¬ 
cordingly,  the  adorable  mystery  of  the  Chris¬ 
tian  Eucharist,  in  treating  of  which  the  Fathers 
of  the  Church  were  struck  with  holy  dread 
and  religious  awe,  is  described  by  you  as  an 
“absurdity.” — (page  35.)  So  it  has  always 
appeared  to  the  animal  man. 

I  need  scarcely  inform  you,  sir,  that  the  in¬ 
fidels  of  all  ages  would  have  been  quite 
satisfied,  if  they  had  been  allowed  to  construe 
the  Bible  according  to  what  they  call  common 
sense.  In  reference  to  this  standard,  they  and 


/ 


52 


KIRWAN  UNMASKED. 


you  appear  to  be  perfectly  agreed.  Thus, 
you  make  the  Bible  and  common  sense  the 
ultimate  tribunals  in  the  decision  of  religious 
belief.  Thus,  in  the  exercise  of  common 
sense,  you  no  doubt  deny  the  Divinity  of  Christ 
implicitly,  at  least,  since  you  call  it  “  blasphe¬ 
mous'’  to  designate  the  ever  glorious  and 
Blessed  Virgin  Mary,  “  as  the  Mother  of  God.” 
If  the  Person  of  Christ  was  simply  Divine,  and 
Mary  was  truly  his  mother,  she  is,  and  has 
been  always  called,  Mother  of  God,  as  well  as 
mother  of  man ;  and  your  denial  of  this  can  be 
logically  sustained,  only  by  your  denial  of  the 
Saviour’s  Divinity.  In  fact,  I  suppose  your 
“  common  sense”  has  already  pronounced 
against  the  mystery  of  the  Incarnation.  Thus 
also,  you  take  sides  with  the  infidels  of  the 
Redeemer’s  age,  as  well  as  of  our  own,  and 
you  tell  us,  in  spite  of  the  evidence  furnished 
by  Him  in  His  human  character,  and  assert 
that  God  only  can  forgive  sins. — (page  67.) 
In  the  spirit  of  a  true  infidel,  you  describe  the 
priesthood  of  the  Catholic  Church,  throughout 
the  world,  and  for  eighteen  centuries,  as  hav¬ 
ing  been  actuated  solely  by  the  love  of  money. 
— (page  70.)  Again  still,  in  the  spirit  of  the 
infidel,  you  sneer  at  the  history  of  religion  as 
counter  to  your  appeal  to  “  common  sense,” 
and  tell  us,  that  “  with  you  the  authority  of  our 


KIRWAN  UNMASKED. 


53 


popes  and  councils  are  not  worth  a  penny.” — 
(page  70.) 

The  angel  Gabriel  saluted  the  blessed  Vir¬ 
gin  Mary,  as  the  scripture  records,  “  Hail,  full 
of  grace but  you,  the  Presbyterian  minister 
of  Elizabethtown,  speak  of  her  as  you  would 
of  a  female  selling  candies  at  the  corners  of 
the  street,  from  whom  you  had  just  bought  a 
supply  for  the  young  Kirwans,  and  call  her 
the  “  good  woman”  condescendingly . — (page 
74.)  The  holy  Eucharist  under  your  “com¬ 
mon  sense,”  you  declare  to  be  so  “  absurd  as 
to  defeat  itself.” — (page  75.)  You  decide  that, 
the  words,  “'This  is  my  body,”  mean,  this  is 
not  my  body,  and  with  that  swelling  vanity 
peculiar  to  an  evangelical  minister  who  takes 
“  common  sense”  as  his  rule  for  interpreting 
holy  scripture,  you  exhibit  your  sleight  of  hand 
with  a  puff  of  self-complacency,  and  call  upon 
us  to  admire — “just  see  how  a  little  common 
sense  simplifies  every  thing.” — (page  76.) 

Lest  I  should  interpose '  by  venturing  to 
suggest  that  a  thing  ought  to  be  received  for 
what  our  Saviour  says  it  is,  you  warn  me  off, 
and  tell  me  in  true  arrogant  style,  that  “  you 
will  have  none  of  my  nonsense  about  the  sub¬ 
stance  contained  under  the  species.” — (page 
76.)  Now,  dear  Kir  wan,  I  have  scriptural 
authority  for  what  you  here  call  nonsense. 


54 


KIRWAN  UNMASKED. 


The  Holy  Ghost  descended  on  the  apostles 
under  the  species  of  “  tongues  of  fire  he  de¬ 
scended  on  the  Saviour  under  the  species  of 
“  a  dove/’  and  you  have  decided  that  the  dis¬ 
tinction  of  the  Evangelists  between  the  species 
and  the  substance  is  “  nonsense ;  .  .  .  it  is 
‘  darkening  counsel  by  words  without  know¬ 
ledge/  ” — (page  76.)  I  recommend  your  case 
to  the  General  Assembly.  In  fact,  you  have 
become  so  enlightened  in  matters  of  dogmatic 
theology,  under  the  inspiration  of  “common 
sense,”  that  you  are  almost  fit  for  a  residence 
in  Boston,  where  the  Reverend  Theodore 
Parker  will  no  doubt  have  the  charity  to  ex¬ 
tend  to  you  the  right  hand  of  Christian  fellow¬ 
ship. 

In  reference  to  the  Holy  Eucharist,  your 
infidel  principle  of  “  common  sense”  as  inter¬ 
preter  of  Scripture,  prompts  you  to  say  that 
“  nothing  equals  it  in  absurdity  in  all  pagan¬ 
ism.” — (page  76.)  Pray,  did  it  ever  come  in 
the  way  of  your  extensive  reading  to  have 
seen  a  book  called  the  “  Presbyterian  Con¬ 
fession  of  Faith,  as  amended  and  ratified  by 
the  General  Assembly  at  their  sessions  in  1821, 
and  printed  by  Tower  and  Hogan  in  1827  ?” 
If  so,  turn  to  pages  73  and  74,  and  you  will 
find  it  ruled  that  in  certain  cases  men  are 
placed  by  their  Creator  in  such  a  situation,  that 


KIRWAN  UNMASKED. 


55 


if  they  do  a  thing  they  “  commit  a  sin  against 
God/’  and  if  they  do  not  do  it,  they  “  commit  a 
greater  sin  /”  Here  is  a  Presbyterian  Doc¬ 
trine  to  which  you  might  apply  your  “  common 
sense”  with  some  advantage  to  your  own 
brethren.  The  rich  theme  of  ridicule  which  it 
would  furnish  for  a  pen  of  such  profanity  as 
yours,  will  be  obvious  to  you  at  a  glance. 

You  tell  us  that  “the  manner  of  our  public 
worship  is  heathen,  and  was  originally  adopted 
for  the  seducing  of  the  Heathen  to  Christi¬ 
anity.” — (page  82.)  This  idea  would  seem  to 
have  been  derived  by  you  rather  from  Gibbon, 
than  from  Voltaire  or  Thomas  Paine.  You 
have  the  candor,  however,  to  admit  the  high 
antiquity  of  our  manner  of  worship,  when  you 
describe  the  use  to  which  it  was  applied  in  the 
primitive  Church.  The  conversion  of  nations 
has  been  itself  regarded  as  a  proof  of  the  divine 
origin  of  Christianity.  You,  however,  have 
discovered  that  it  was  owing  to  a  system  of 
seduction ,  carried  on  through  our  Catholic 
“  manner  of  worship,”  by  which  the  poor  Hea¬ 
then  were  “  seduced”  into  the  new  Religion ! 
Could  any  but  an  infidel  give  utterance  to  such 
a  sentiment  ? 

But  detail  is  unnecessary.  The  high  mys¬ 
teries  of  the  Christian  faith  you  reduce  to  the 
standard  of  “  common  sense,”  on  almost  every 


56 


KIRWAN  UNMASKED. 


page.  Thus :  “  Extreme  unction,”  you  have 
already  pronounced  “  extreme  nonsense.”  Page 
82. 

.  “  How  simple  and  ‘  common  sense’  is  all  this," 
— (S.  S.  Page  27.)  “  Blessed  be  God,  you  have 
not  turned  your  keys  on  the  ‘  common  sense’  ol 
the  world.”— (page  29.)  Of  your  infidel  rib¬ 
aldry  I  will  give  but  one  specimen,  which  I 
think  can  hardly  be  surpassed  in  the  annals  of 
sneering  skepticism.  “  Your  daily  changing  of 
a  wafer  into  the  real  body  of  Christ,  and  then 
eating  him,  beats  any  thing  St.  Fechin  ever  did. 
Your  preparing  an  old  sinner  for  heaven  by 
rubbing  him  with  olive  oil,  and  then  opening 
its  gates  to  him  by  the  keys  which  are  only  in 
your  possession,  far  surpasses  Fechin’s  turning 
acorns  to  pork.  We  believe  the  swine  them¬ 
selves  are  constantly  doing  this  in  our  Western 
woods.” — (page  39.)  You  tell  us  that  the  re¬ 
spect  entertained  by  Catholics  for  relics  has 
the  true  relic  for  its  object — and  that,  on  Cath¬ 
olic  principles,  “  it  is  all  the  same”  that  the  ob¬ 
ject  of  reverence  or  respect  should  be  the  head 
of  “  St.  Paul”  or  the  head  of  “  Balaam’s  Ass  ;” 
and  you  add  in  your  own  name ,  and  with  a 
sneer  becoming  an  infidel,  “  and  I  suppose  the 
difference,  sir,  is  very  little .” — (page  70.)  So 
then,  Rev.  Nicholas  Murray,  you  regard  the 
head  of  an  ass  and  that  of  an  apostle  with  equal 


KIRWAN  UNMASKED. 


57 


respect ;  for  the  reason,  no  doubt,  that  in  your 
estimation,  both  are  figuratively  of  the  same 
species,  or  perhaps  that  in  this  instance  both 
are  scriptural  subjects. 

It  seems  the  Tract  Societies  and  Sunday 
Schools  have  adopted  your  letters,  and  given 
them  a  very  extensive  circulation.  I  do  not 
know  a  shorter  method  of  turning  the  young 
who  may  be  subject  to  their  training  into  in¬ 
fidels,  than  by  placing  such  a  book  in  their 
hands.  Each  of  their  pupils  has  as  good  a 
right  to  explain  the  Bible  according  to  what 
he  will  call  “  common  sense,”  as  you  have 
had.  But  they  will  not  be  restrained  in  their 
blasphemous  ribaldry  by  the  limits  which  a 
black  coat  and  a  white  cravat  have  prescribed 
for  your  pen. 

They  will  apply  the  arguments  of  “  common 
sense”  which  you  have  wielded  against  Bap¬ 
tism  and  the  Holy  Eucharist,  to  the  antece¬ 
dent  doctrines  of  original  sin,  and  the  atone¬ 
ment,  and  they  will  find  no  “  common  sense” 
in  either.  But  why  should  I  moralize  for  you 
on  such  a  subject,  when  I  have  no  evidence 
to  prove  that  such  a  result  has  not  been  the 
very  object  of  your  letters  ;  and  that  your 
zeal  against  Popery  is  not  merely  the  gild¬ 
ing  of  the  infidel  pill  which  you  would  wish 
to  see  swallowed  by  tract  distributors,  Sunday- 


58 


KIRWAN  UNMASKED. 


school  teachers,  Sunday-school  children,  and 
all. 

Sir,  the  language  and  sentiment  which  I 
have  had  to  pass  under  review  in  this  letter 
are  so  unworthy  of  a  man  professing  Christi¬ 
anity,  that  I  must  withhold,  at  its  close,  even 
the  expression  of  my  pity  for  you,  whilst  1 
cherish  towards  you  as  usual  good  wishes  and 
good-will. 

John  Hughes,  Bishop  of  New  York. 


KIRWAN  UNMASKED. 


59 


LETTER  VI., 

TO  KIRWAN, 

alias  the  Rev.  Nicholas  Murray,  D.  D., 

Of  Elizabethtown,  New  Jersey. 

Dear  Sir  : — 

The  task  which  I  imposed  on  myself  at  the 
commencement  of  these  letters  is  nearly  ac¬ 
complished.  I  wished  to  investigate  the  al¬ 
leged  reasons  which  induced  you  to  forsake 
the  Church — and  which  forbid  your  return. 
The  result  is  before  the  public,  and  may  be 
briefly  summed  up. 

You  will  observe  that  I  have  not  pretended 
to  defend  a  single  Catholic  doctrine  from  your 
coarse  and  profane. invective, — that  I  have  not 
raised  the  question  with  you  as  to  whether 
those  doctrines  are  true  or  false ;  that  I  have 
confined  myself  to  watching  narrowly  the  state 
of  your  mind,  your  motives  and  movements, 
as  described  by  yourself,  until  I  saw  you  clear¬ 
ly  beyond  the  bounds  of  the  Catholic  church 
and  landed  in  the  cold,  dark  regions  of  infideli¬ 
ty.  If  your  own  statements  as  to  the  utter 


60 


KIR  WAN  UNMASKED. 


ignorance  of  your  mind  in  regard  to  any  and 
all  religion  when  you  became  an  infidel,  are  to 
be  relied  on,  it  follows  that  in  assigning  the 
reasons  for  your  change,  as  set  forth  in  your 
letters,  you  have  been  attempting  a  gross  im¬ 
position  on  the  credulity  of  your  Protestant 
readers.  You  give  a  double  certificate  of  the 
process  of  your  conversion.  One  side  attests 
considerable  religious  information  :  the  other 
certifies  bluntly  that  “  your  mind  was  a  perfect 
blank  as  to  all  religious  instruction”  Both 
are  from  your  own  pen.  It  remains  for  you 
to  reconcile  the  contradiction  as  well  as  you 
can. 

Allow  me,  in  the  mean  time,  to  suggest  the 
only  plausible,  natural,  and  satisfactory  reason 
for  the  important  event  in  regard  to  which  you 
have  taken  such  superfluous  pains  to  enlighten 
the  public. 

It  is  understood  that  you  arrived  in  this 
country  a  poor  Irish  orphan  boy.  This  was 
not  your  fault.  It  might  have  been  your  merit. 
Whether  you  were  then  an  infidel  or  a  Catho¬ 
lic  is  best  known  to  yourself.  At  all  events 
you  attracted  the  charitable  notice  of  certain 
Presbyterian  patrons.  In  the  intentions  of 
their  benevolence  towards  you,  your  renun¬ 
ciation  of  Popery  was  a  condition  either  al¬ 
ready  accomplished  or  necessarily  implied  as 


KIRWAN  UNMASKED. 


61 


a  sine  qua  non  of  your  education.  Now  what 
could  be  more  natural,  under  these  circum¬ 
stances,  than  that  you  should  become  a  Protest¬ 
ant,  after  the  fashion  of  training  provided,  and 
the  creed  professed  by  your  patrons  ?  If  in  all  , 
this  your  conscience  approved  of  what  your 
friends  recommended,  so  much  the  better  for 
you.  I  only  mention  the  circumstances  to 
supply  a  hiatus  in  your  narrative.  They  are 
quite  sufficient  to  explain  your  conversion, 
and  the  public  would  not  be  so  unreasonable, 
had  you  made  them  acquainted  with  all  this, 
as  to  ask  for  any  other.  It  is  now  nearly  thirty 
years  since  these  things  took  place.  You  be¬ 
gin  to  be  well  stricken  in  years — you  are  ap¬ 
proaching  the  confines  of  old  age  ;  and  the 
same  indulgent  public  would  have  dispensed 
with  your  reasons  for  not  returning  now  to  the 
Communion  which  you  thus  forsook  in  your 
boyhood.  It  is  admitted  on  all  hands  that,  in 
cases  like  yours,  a  wife  and  children  are  sub¬ 
stantial  objections  to  such  a  step.  When  the 
husband  and  father  is,  moreover,  a  Protestant 
clergyman,  it  requires  an  extraordinary  grace 
to  overcome  them. 

I  now  leave  it  to  yourself  to  say,  whether  it 
was  not  unwise  on  your  part,  after  having  ap¬ 
peared  with  your  natural  countenance  so  long, 
to  put  on  the  mask  in  the  fiftieth  year  of  your 

6 


02 


KIRWAN  UNMASKED 


age  ?  Whether  it  was  worthy  of  your  rank 
and  station  among  the  men  of  our  age,  to 
weave  a  narrative  of  your  conversion  with 
materials  derived  from  imagination,  while  the 
plain  history  of  the  case  lay  open  before  your 
consciousness  and  memory?  Yet  when  I  re- 
gard  the  profane  spirit  of  your  letters  ;  when  I 
consider  that  you  imitate  closely  infidel  tactics 
against  Christianity  in  your  mode  of  assault — 
that  you  ridicule  where  you  cannot  reason — 
that  where  you  pretend  to  reason  it  is  not 
against  the  Catholic  doctrine,  as  Catholics  hold 
it,  but  against  such  doctrine  misrepresented, 
turned  into  burlesque,  and  thus  fitted  for  your 
purpose — when  I  reflect  on  all  this,  I  am  not 
surprised  that  you  constructed  your  laboratory 
in  the  “  camera  obscura,”  and  shunned  the 
open  day — that  you  insulted  the  memory  of  a 
fallen  but  not  otherwise  dishonorable  priest, 
by  affixing  his  name  to  your  letters  rather  than 
your  own. 

You  wish  me  to  dispute  with  you  on  matters 
of  general  controversy.  I  must  beg  leave  to 
decline  the  proposed  honor.  I  cannot  consent 
to  dispute  with  any  man  for  whom  I  feel  no 
respect,  and  therefore  I  can  enter  into  no  con¬ 
troversy  with  you ;  especially  until  you  have 
extricated  yourself  from  the  inconsistencies 
and  self-contradictions  pointed  out  in  this  re- 


KIRWAN  UNMASKED. 


63 


view.  You  suggest  “the  inference  that  I  am 
a  devil.” — (p.  64.)  You  proclaim  “  your  high 
respect  for  me.” — (p.  75.)  Now,  sir,  I  entertain 
no  respect  for  any  man,  and  especially  a  Min¬ 
ister  of  the  Gospel ,  who  can  cherish  and  avow 
“  his  high  respect”  for  “  a  devil,”  even  by  in¬ 
ference. 

You  wrote  your  letters  in  the  midst  of  the 
awful  famine  which  strewed  the  highways  and 
ditches  of  your  unhappy  country  with  dead 
bodies,  last  year.  Among  them  may  have 
been  some  of  those  for  whom,  Mr.  Prime  says, 
you  wrote  your  letters,  viz  :  “  your  kinsmen, 
according  to  the  flesh.”  Now,  it  was  not  un¬ 
common  for  persons,  whose  Irish  heart  had 
not  become  withered  by  hostile  seasoning,  to 
become  insane,  during  that  awful  crisis — turn¬ 
ed  into  maniacs  by  the  news  of  an  hour.  Sec¬ 
tarianism  was  forgotten — humanity  was  stirred 
to  its  depths  in  the  bosom  of  the  entire  Amer¬ 
ican  people — Jews,  Christians,  Catholics,  Prot¬ 
estants,  Presbyterians,  believers  and  unbeliev¬ 
ers  of  every  name,  were  vying  with  each  other 
in  their  efforts  to  send  bread  to  the  dying. 
And  they  did  send  bread ;  they  constructed  an 
historical  monument  of  charity,  glorious  as  the 
land  which  reared  it,  and  sufficient  to  atone, 
in  some  measure,  for  the  bigotries  of  a  thou¬ 
sand  years.  It  was  in  the  midst  of  this  death- 


64 


KIRVVAN  UNMASKED. 


struggle  of  your  native  land,  that  you  had  the 
impiety  to  invent,  and  the  inhumanity  to  apply, 
the  following  profane  and  horrible  pun,  on  the 
words  of  our  Saviour : — “  He  that  eats  this 
bread  will  never  hunger.  All  that  you  (Cath¬ 
olics)  have  to  do,  if  your  principle  be  true,  is 
to  give  your  wafer  to  the  poor,  famishing  Irish, 
and  they  hunger  no  more!' — (page  77.)  How 
well  this  sustains  Mr.  Prime’s  statement,  that 
in  writing  your  Kirwan’s  letters,  you  were 
actuated  by  “  a  sense  of  duty  to  your  kinsmen, 
according  to  the  flesh,  your  countrymen  and 
brethren  !” 

But  supposing  I  were  to  enter  into  contro¬ 
versy  with  you  on  general  topics,  it  is  mani¬ 
fest  that  besides  being  a  party,  you  claim  to 
be  a  witness,  an  advocate,  and  what  is  more,  a 
judge,  in  your  own  cause  !  You  profess  to 
teach  me  what  the  Catholic  religion  is,  al¬ 
though  you  had  “  forgotten  your  catechism  at 
eighteen  years  of  age,”  and  I  take  it  for  grant¬ 
ed  you  have  never  looked  into  it  since,  except 
in  the  same  spirit  and  for  the  same  purposes 
which  induce  the  infidel  to  read  the  scriptures. 
If  I  pretend  to  know  any  thing  of  my  religion, 
you  politely  tell  me  that  “  you  will  have  none 
of  my  nonsense.”  Why  then  do  you  ask  me 
to  enter  into  controversy  with  you  ?  Besides, 
who  would  be  the  judge  ?  “  Common  sense,” 


KIRWAN  UNMASKED.  65 


you  reply.  But  whose  common  sense,  yours 
or  mine  ?  If  you  submit  to  mine,  I  condemn 
your  position  at  once.  If  you  will  not  submit 
to  mine,  what  right  have  you  to  suppose  that 
I  should  submit  to  yours?  To  what  tribunal 
do  you  appeal  ?  That  of  history  ?  But  its 
authority  with  you  is  not  worth  a  penny  !  To 
the  Bible  ?  But  the  Bible  by  itself  will  give 
no  decision.  It  requires  an  interpreter ,  as 
much  as  the  constitution  and  laws  of  the  coun¬ 
try.  Who  shall  be  the  interpreter  ?  Methinks 
I  hear  you  speaking  of  your  “  common  sense” 
again  for  that  office — so  that  we  come  round 
the  Protestant  circle  to  the  starting  point. 

If  you  say  the  appeal  is  to  the  “  common 
sense”  of  mankind  in  general,  (restricting  the 
term  to  those  who  profess  Christianity,)  the 
verdict  will  not  be  unanimous ;  but  it  will  be 
in  my  favor  by  a  majority  of  three  to  one.  To 
wffiat  tribunal,  then,  would  you  be  willing  to 
submit,  in  case  I  were  disposed  to  join  issue 
with  you  in  a  controversy  on  the  great  ques¬ 
tions  on  which  Catholics  and  Protestants  are 
divided  ?  But  the  inquiry  is  purely  hypothet¬ 
ical  ;  for  although  I  reserve  to  myself  the  right 
of  reviewing  your  labors,  when  I  think  proper, 
depend  upon  it  there  will  not,  there  cannot  be, 
any  dogmatical  controversy  between  us.  If 
your  genius  and  inclination  lie  in  the  direction 

6* 


66 


KIRWAN  UNMASKED. 


of  profanity,  you  can  continue  to  insult  the 
mysteries  of  the  Catholic  faith  as  you  have 
done.  For  this  you  have  but  to  copy  from 
Protestant  writers  of  your  own  class,  who 
have  gone  before  you.  But  I  see  no  reason 
why  I  should  undertake  to  discuss  the  reprint 
of  their  opinions,  found  in  your  book,  rather 
than  in  the  original  text  as  found  in  their  own. 
As  far  as  either  come  in  the  way  of  my  sub¬ 
ject,  I  shall  do  this  at  my  own  convenience, 
in  the  sequel  of  those  letters  which  I  have  ad¬ 
dressed  to  my  “  Dear  Reader,5'  and  not  to  you. 
In  the  present  review  I  purposed  only  to  con¬ 
sider  those  little  incidents  of  waning  faith,  ac¬ 
cumulated  misgivings,  and  autobiography  which 
preceded,  or  were  connected  with,  your  tran¬ 
sition  from  the  Catholic  faith  to  a  Protestant 
denomination.  This  portion  of  your  letters 
was  your  own,  and  was  (what  cannot  be  al¬ 
ways  said  of  works  of  imagination)  perfectly 
original.  Having  done  this,  it  only  remains 
for  me  to  assure  you  of  my  sincere  good 
wishes,  and  to  say  for  the  present,  farewell. 

And  now  I  will  take  the  liberty  of  addressing ' 
a  few  words  to  the  general  reader  in  connec¬ 
tion  with  this  subject.  What  advantage  does 
religion,  of  any  name,  derive  from  such  books 
as  Kirwan’s  letters  ?  Do  they  promote  piety  ? 


KIRWAN  UNMASKED. 


67 


Is  charity  increased  by  them  ?  Do  they  con¬ 
vert  Catholics  ?  Is  the  faith  of  Protestants  so 
weak  that  it  requires  the  support  of  such  but¬ 
tresses  ?  The  questions  on  which  Catholics 
and  Protestants  are  so  unhappily  divided  have 
been  discussed  by  able  men  on  both  sides,  until 
the  argument  has  been  exhausted.  These  are 
considerations  which  address  themselves  to 
sincere  minds  of  all  parties.  Those  who  will 
reflect  a  moment  will  perceive  that  the  Catho¬ 
lic  religion  has  withstood  and  now  withstands 
such  attacks,  just  as  the  pyramid  does  the  as¬ 
saults  of  the  wandering  Arab.  If  it  were  the 
system  which  such  writers  as  Kirwan  repre¬ 
sents,  it  could  not  subsist  a  single  year.  Good 
men  from  within,  who  know  what  it  really  is, 
would  not  stay ;  good  men  from  without  would 
not  come  to  it.  Now  a  whole  volume  might 
be  filled  with  the  names  of  illustrious  converts 
from  the  different  denominations  of  Protestant¬ 
ism,  who,  after  mature  deliberation,  have  joined 
the  Church  within  the  last  quarter  of  a  century, 
many  of  them  at  the  sacrifice  of  their  worldly 
interests  and  prospects.  How  could  this  have 
come  to  pass  if  Catholicity  were  what  these 
writers  allege  ? 

Does  not  this  single  fact  outweigh  a  ton  of 
such  theory-books  as  the  Key  of  Popery,  or 
Kirwan’s  Letters  ? — What  are  these  books 


68 


KIRWAN  UNMASKED. 


generally  made  np  of?  Assertion,  party  in¬ 
vective,  charges,  sometimes  entirely  false,  and 
always  grossly  exaggerated. 

Thus,  such  writers  as  I  speak  of  will  tell  you 
that  the  Catholic  Clergy  are  a  vast  corporation 
of  swindlers. — But  how  will  any  man  of  even 
moderate  judgment  reconcile  this  with  the  fact 
that  no  other  clergymen  are  so  ready  to  en¬ 
counter  danger  in  the  discharge  of  their  min¬ 
istry,  whether  in  the  cholera-hospitals,  the 
fever-sheds,  or  wherever  it  becomes  a  martyr 
of  charity  to  meet  death?  They  will  tell  you 
that  the  Catholic  religion  is  the  deadly  enemy 
of  liberty.  But  then  how  comes  it  that  all  the 
elements  and  principles  of  social  right  and  civil 
liberty  are  of  Catholic  origin,  and  that  the  best 
lawyer  among  us  would  be  somewhat  puzzled 
if  requested  to  point  out  a  single  addition  made 
to  them  by  Protestantism  ?  This  is  fact ,  in 
opposition  to  theory.  When  Protestantism 
came  it  found  several  Republics,  and  did  not 
find  one  absolute  monarchy  in  Christendom, 
except  Russia,  which  was  not  in  communion 
with  the  Pope.  They  wall  tell  you  that  the 
Catholic  religion  is  an  enemy  to  knowledge. 
But  the  fact  is  that  if  you  remove  from  the  map 
of  Christendom,  all  the  great  institutions  of 
knowledge,  in  every  department,  founded  and 
endowed  by  Catholics  alone,  very  little  will  be 


KIRWAN  UNMASKED. 


69 


left  remaining.  They  will  tell  you  that  the 
Church  is  the  enemy  of  happiness.  But  the 
fact  is  that  nations  appear  to  have  been  much 
more  happy,  if  apparent  contentment  be  any 
symptom,  before  the  reformation,  than  since. 
Religious  and  civil,  not  to  speak  of  general, 
wars,  have  followed  each  other  in  almost  con¬ 
stant  succession  in  most  of  the  countries  of 
Europe  since  that  event ;  and  if  these  be  signs 
of  happiness,  I  am  much  mistaken.  They  will 
tell  you  that  poverty  is  a  certain  companion 
and  consequence  of  the  Catholic  religion. — 
This,  even  if  it  were  true,  amounts  to  little; 
for  the  Divine  Author  of  Christianity  did  not 
intend  his  religion  for  the  special  advantage  of 
bankers  and  stock-jobbers,  as  these  writers 
would  lead  us  to  suppose.  And  if  the  “  Gospel 
was  preached  to  the  poor,”  it  follows  that  pov¬ 
erty  would  be,  if  any  thing,  a  sign  in  favor  of 
the  true  religion,  rather  than  the  contrary. 
Italy  and  Spain  may  be  called  poor  nations, 
but  yet  I  am  not  aware  that  any  one  is  allowed 
in  those  Catholic  countries  to  die  by  the  road¬ 
sides  of  starvation.  Protestant  England,  on 
the  other  hand,  is  a  country  of  great  wealth 
and  great  'pauperism.  But  in  England  and 
Ireland,  such  writers  point  to  the  contrast  be¬ 
tween  the  Catholics  and  Protestants.  They 
seem  to  forget,  however,  that  by  one  thousand 


70 


KIBWAN  UNMASKED. 


and  one  different  ways,  sometimes  directly,  at 
all  times  indirectly,  the  Protestants  of  those 
countries  have  been,  legally  till  within  less  than 
twenty  years,  helping  themselves  in  the  way 
of  worldly  prosperity,  at  the  expense  of  the 
Catholics.  Now  this  is  the  fact,  and  no 
man  of  common  information  and  candor  will 
deny  it. 

I  might  go  on  indefinitely  in  pointing  out 
the  mutual  contradiction  between  the  facts  of 
history  and  the  theories  of  your  anti-Catholic 
writers,  of  a  certain  class.  But  as  regards 
Ireland  in  particular,  not  only  were  the  laws 
made  so  as  of  a  certainty  to  reduce  the  Catho¬ 
lics  to  poverty,  but  if  ignorance  is  an  impedi¬ 
ment  to  the  attainment  of  wealth,  the  legisla¬ 
ture  determined  that  the  Catholics  should  be 
poor  forever  ;  and  with  the  stigma  of  so  bar¬ 
barous  an  enactment  on  the  escutcheon  of 
Protestant  Britain,  it  requires  singular  power 
of  face  in  such  writers  as  the  Rev.  Dr.  Mur¬ 
ray,  of  Elizabethtown,  to  allude  to  the  subject 
at  all.  Let  me  contrast  the  facts  of  history, 
in  the  very  terms  of  the  several  statutes,  with 
the  theory  of  our  modern  instructor. 

“If  a  Catholic  kept  school,  or  taught  any 
person,  Protestant  or  Catholic,  any  species  of 
literature,  or  science,  such  teacher  was  for  the 
crime  of  teaching,  punishable  by  law  by  ban- 


KIRWAN  UNMASKED. 


71 


ishment — and,  if  he  returned  from  banishment, 
he  was  subject  to  be  hanged  as  a  felon. 

“If  a  Catholic,,  whether  child  or  adult,  at¬ 
tended,  in  Ireland,  a  school  kept  by  a  Catholic, 
or  was  privately  instructed  by  a  Catholic,  such 
Catholic,  although  a  child  in  its  early  infancy, 
incurred  a  forfeiture  of  all  its  property,  present 
or  future. 

“If  a  Catholic  child,  however  young,  was 
sent  to  any  foreign  country  for  education,  such 
infant  child  incurred  a  similar  penalty — that 
is,  a  forfeiture  of  all  right  to  property,  present 
or  prospective. 

“  If  any  person  in  Ireland  made  any  remit¬ 
tance  of  money  or  goods,  for  the  maintenance 
of  any  Irish  child  educated  in  a  foreign  coun¬ 
try,  such  person  incurred  a  sim^arTorfeiture/ 

Such  were  the  laws.  Kirwan’s  forefathers, 
in  their  day,  and  himself  in  his  early  life,  were 
their  victims.  Now,  with  these  facts  staring 
him  in  the  face,  this  man  says — “  If  the  igno¬ 
rance  of  Ireland  has  any  thing  to  do  with  the 
degradation  of  Ireland,  I  charge  that  ignorance 
on  Popery — (page  50.)  The  italics  are  his 
own,  and  to  judge  by  the  statement  one  would 
be  led  to  suppose  that  he  has  not  escaped  from 
under  the  edict  against  knowledge  to  this  day. 

No,  no ;  let  candid  Protestants  look  for  and 
examine  the  true  facts  in  all  these  cases ;  let 


,T 


72 


KIRWAN  UNMASKED. 


them  judge  for  themselves,  and  they  will  be 
surprised  to  discover  how  much  that  is  true 
has  been  held  back  from  them  on  all  such  sub¬ 
jects,  and  how  much  that  is  false,  or  falsely 
represented,  has  been  circulated  among  them 
instead  of  the  truth,  by  mere  book-writers  and 
men  of  the  shop.  And  as  regards  the  Catholic 
religion,  if  they  wish  to  know  what  it  is,  even 
for  the  sake  of  information,  let  them  consult 
authentic  sources,  and  be  slow  to  receive  then' 
knowledge  of  it  from  those  who  are  seldom 
either  qualified  or  disposed  to  state  it  truly. 
In  my  other  series  of  letters  I  propose  to  state 
it  as  it  is  understood  by  Catholics ;  to  explain 
its  doctrines,  where  explanation  is  judged 
necessary ;  and  to  sustain  them  by  such  proofs 
from  scripture,  history,  and  reason,  as  are 
most  likely  to  have  weight  with  men,  whethe 
Catholics  or  Protestants,  who  are  not  yet  pre 
pared  to  reduce  the  awful  mysteries  of  Chris 
tian  revelation  to  the  infidel's  standard  of 
judgment — “  common  sense." 

John  Hughes,  Bishop  of  New  York. 


THE  END. 


